Announcements

MAPOR 2025 Conference Call for Abstracts

Patrick Hsieh

The Midwest Association for Public Opinion Research Conference Committee is hard at work planning MAPOR’s 50th annual conference.

November 21-22, 2025

Embassy Suites Chicago Downtown

600 N. State Street

Call for Abstracts

Submit By September 6 (extended from August 15), 2025

The Midwest Association for Public Opinion Research’s annual conference welcomes abstract submissions on any topic related to public opinion research, communication, or survey research methodology. This year, we are accepting submissions for the following types of presentations: papers, posters, and panels of papers.

“Fifty Years of Measuring Change: Where we were, where we are, and where we’re going”

This year’s milestone conference will celebrate the role that MAPOR has served for generations of students, academics, researchers, and others in public opinion research. We will highlight the history of MAPOR and its contributors, trends in public opinion research, and changes in how we measure  social and political issues over the last half century. We will also look ahead to where the field of public opinion research is going and the present-day ideas, topics, and challenges that shape public opinion research and MAPOR today and into the future.

We encourage abstract submissions on all facets of research related to public opinion, communication, survey research, and their methodologies. Topics may include but are not limited to: politics and public opinion; social media and public opinion; journalism, media, and public opinion; public opinion on social, economic, and political issues; questionnaire design; data collection issues and strategies; existing and new methods for collecting data from respondents; online panel data collection; nonresponse; total survey error; machine learning, artificial intelligence, big data, and data science; location and geographic information; challenges facing the field due to technological and societal shifts; the ethical use of public opinion and survey data; qualitative and mixed-method research techniques; cross-cultural research; hard-to-reach and historically underrepresented populations; and data quality issues. For this special anniversary, we also encourage submissions related to the history of MAPOR and the field of public opinion research.

Submissions: Abstracts of 300 words or fewer can be submitted here. In addition to a title and abstract, you will be asked to provide the name, institutional affiliation, and email address for all authors. The same author’s name may appear as first author on a maximum of two submissions. To allow for blind review, please remove all personally identifying information from the abstract’s text before submission.

Note to student authors: If the lead author is a student who will be enrolled in an undergraduate or graduate program at the time of the conference, you may submit your paper to the MAPOR Fellows Student Paper Competition (see additional information on the MAPOR Fellows Student Paper Competition, available at www.mapor.org). When submitting a student paper to the competition, the student submitter will be asked to provide the name and e-mail address of a faculty mentor, who will need to endorse the paper when it is submitted. The student paper competition team committee will reach out after the abstract submission window has closed. If you have questions, reach out to president@mapor.org.

Panel Proposals: A panel is a session that focuses on a common theme and includes 4 or 5 participants. A panel proposal requires a description of 300 words or fewer discussing the issues to be addressed and their importance. Also, submissions should list the potential panelists, their institutional affiliations, email addresses, and tentative titles of presentations. Panels related to the conference theme are especially encouraged.

Submission Information: All abstracts must be posted no later than 11:59pm CDT on Friday September 6, 2025 (extended from August 15). Accepted papers sharing a theme will be scheduled during a paper session. Papers with more individualized topics will be scheduled during a poster session. MAPOR considers both types of presentation equally valuable. All submitters will be notified via e-mail by September 6th of their abstract’s acceptance status. For questions or problems with the submission process, please contact the 2025 MAPOR conference chair, Beth Fisher at: abstracts@mapor.org.

Travel Grants: The MAPOR Council will be offering two types of support grants for the Annual Conference: the MAPOR Student Support Grant and the MAPOR Colleague Grant. More details on these awards can be found here: https://www.mapor.org/support-grants/.

Student Fellowship Program

Benjamin Schapiro

The Midwest Association for Public Opinion Research (MAPOR) Executive Council enthusiastically invites undergraduate and graduate students to apply to the MAPOR Student Fellowship Program. This program is a wonderful opportunity for students to pursue a research idea and publish their work. If accepted, you will be invited to present your research at this year’s MAPOR conference in Chicago, which is scheduled for November 21-22. 2025.

MAPOR is committed to supporting student professional development, learning, and network-building. The Student Fellowship Program is an important way to advance this goal by helping the next generation of scholars in public opinion research build on their research, expand their networks, and engage and collaborate with senior researchers.

Students who are accepted to the Student Fellowship Program will work closely with a MAPOR Fellow or other MAPOR member on a shared topic of interest, submit an abstract to MAPOR’s annual conference, and present their work. 

Who should apply? 

  • Any graduate or undergraduate student with a research interest related to public opinion research, survey methodology, survey statistics, qualitative research, or applications of survey data.

Why should I apply?

  • Pursue your research interest in public opinion research and have an opportunity to present it at the annual MAPOR conference!
  • Work 1-on-1 with a MAPOR Fellow or other MAPOR member with shared research interests and who are leaders in the field of public opinion research.

Eligibility

This fellowship is open to graduate and undergraduate students with a strong interest in survey research or qualitative research. Applicants should be willing to commit to attending and presenting at this year’s MAPOR conference.

Preferences will be given to first-time MAPOR presenters, students who are in their first or second year of graduate education, or senior year in undergraduate education. 

Application Process and Requirements

To be considered, please submit your application and letter of recommendation by April 30th.

Your proposal should be between 500 and 1000 words. It should include a very brief literature review and an importance statement. If the proposal is quantitative, please make sure you identify and describe the dataset. In addition, the student should identify a faculty mentor and ask them to write a letter of recommendation. 

Send the proposal by email to paul@edchoice.org by Wednesday, April 30th. Include the subject line “MAPOR Student Fellowship Program”.

Contact

If you have any questions about the MAPOR Student Fellowship application process, please feel free to contact Paul DiPerna, email: paul@edchoice.org 

Candidates for Office: 2025-2026

Patrick Hsieh

It’s time to elect the next MAPOR council members to begin roles in November 2025. We currently have three positions open for election: Vice-President/President-Elect, Associate Conference Chair, and Associate Secretary-Treasurer. After roughly a month of open nominations, we’ve got some wonderful candidates running this year. Their bios are below.

If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to reach out to president@mapor.org.


Vice-President/President-Elect

Paul DiPerna | EdChoice

Paul DiPerna

Paul DiPerna is Vice President of Research and Innovation at EdChoice, where he has led the research program since 2010. Paul’s work centers on surveys and polling about American K–12 education and schooling. He directs the monthly EdChoice Public Opinion Tracker and oversees the annual Schooling in America Survey. Previously, Paul worked for six years at the Brown Center on Education Policy at the Brookings Institution. He received his MA in Political Science at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and his BA in Political Science at the University of Dayton.

Paul currently serves as an at-large member on MAPOR’s Executive Council and for the last three years he has contributed to the Awards, Grants, and Support Committee. During this time he has also co-led MAPOR’s Student Fellowship program and travel grant efforts. Paul has been a member of MAPOR since 2014 and AAPOR since 2009.


Associate Conference Chair

Erik Nisbet, Ph.D. | Northwestern University

Erik Nisbet is the Owen L. Coon Professor of Policy Analysis & Communication at Northwestern University and Director of the Center for Communication & Public Policy. His research examines public opinion and political behavior in the United States and abroad, employing survey, experimental, and computational methods. He received his Ph.D. in Communication from Cornell University, after working for seven years in market research and six years at the Cornell Survey Research Center.

Erik’s involvement with MAPOR began as a first-year master’s student at Cornell in 2002, with his co-authored paper participating in the MAPOR Fellows Student Paper Competition. Since then, he has remained an active participant in the conference as both a graduate student and faculty member. Over the past year, he has served on the MAPOR Executive Council contributing to the Online Learning Committee and currently mentors a MAPOR Student Fellow.

In addition to MAPOR, Erik is active in the World Association of Public Opinion Research, recently editing a special issue of the International Journal of Public Opinion Research and delivered the keynote lecture at the 2025 WAPOR Annual meeting in St. Louis. He looks forward to continuing his service to MAPOR as Associate Conference Chair.


Miranda Kaye, Ph.D. | University of Chicago

Miranda Kaye

Miranda Kaye is the Director of the Survey Lab at the University of Chicago. Prior to joining the Survey Lab, she served as the Director of the Survey Research Center at the Pennsylvania State University where she began her AAPOR and PANJPOR memberships. She has served as the chair of a number of academic committees as well as of the State College Friends School Board of Trustees. Since coming to Chicago, she is an active member of MAPOR.

Miranda completed her B.S. in Human Development at Cornell University, her M.S. in Exercise Science at Arizona State University, and her Ph.D. in Kinesiology at the Pennsylvania State University. She has over 15 years of experience in all phases of survey research, including teaching undergraduate and graduate research methods and statistics classes, specializing in projects involving large-scale, multi-modal, longitudinal, field, mixed-methods, and RDD data collection, and providing leadership to academic research centers. In her own research, she applies multivariate methods to the study of human development, health, and well-being with a focus on scale development, measurement, and program evaluation. She loves examining metadata and considering ways to improve methodology as well as supporting the varied projects and methodical needs of researchers.


Associate Secretary-Treasurer

Caroline Smith | Morning Consult

Caroline Smith

Caroline Smith is the Director of Content Research at Morning Consult. She works on a wide variety of polling, including politics, economics, and market research for financial services, travel, and retail industries. Prior to Morning Consult, she worked at N.O.R.C. in the Public Affairs and media research department. Caroline received her B.A. in Political Science and International Relations and her Master’s degree in Political Science from Loyola University Chicago, and she began attending the MAPOR conference in 2018. Caroline is currently a member-at-large on the Executive Council and she looks forward to continuing her service to MAPOR as Associate Secretary-Treasurer.


Nadia Assad | University of Wisconsin Survey Center

Nadia Assad is a Senior Project Director at the University of Wisconsin Survey Center (UWSC), where she has been a key member of the project directing staff since 2014. She brings extensive experience in survey research administration and methodology.

Nadia began her career in survey research as a telephone interviewer and quickly advanced through roles including shift leader and project director. Her experience with multiple areas of survey operations at the UWSC has made her a key member of the Center’s team. In addition to overseeing complex web, mail, and mixed-mode survey projects, she also provides extensive methodological guidance to clients and colleagues on questionnaire design and layout.

Nadia currently serves as the study director for a state-level panel at UWSC, further demonstrating her expertise in managing large-scale, longitudinal research initiatives. Through her work as a survey methodologist, Nadia has contributed to scholarly publications in journals including Public Opinion Quarterly and Field Methods. Nadia holds a Master’s degree in Sociology from UW–Madison and has taught Sociology courses at both UW–Madison and Madison College. Prior to her work in the U.S., she contributed to internationally funded research projects by organizations such as the World Bank and United Nations Development Program.

Since 2023, Nadia has been an enthusiastic participant in MAPOR’s annual conference, presenting papers at both events. She deeply values the organization’s commitment to methodological rigor and innovation, and its welcoming, intellectually vibrant community that supports professionals at every stage of their careers. Her engagement with the conference has been both professionally enriching and personally inspiring.

As a nominee for Associate Secretary-Treasurer, Nadia brings a strong foundation in research leadership, a commitment to methodological excellence, and a collaborative spirit. She is excited about the opportunity to support MAPOR’s mission and contribute to its continued success.

2025 Student Paper Competition

Benjamin Schapiro

The Midwest Association for Public Opinion Research (MAPOR) invites eligible students to enter the association’s MAPOR Fellows Student Paper Competition. Two winning papers, the Doris A. Graber Award in Public Opinion, and the Allan L. McCutcheon Award in Survey Research Methodology, will receive $500 and one free conference registration. The winning papers also will be accepted for presentation during a session at the May 2026 AAPOR conference.

2025 Student Paper Competition

DEADLINE: September 30, 2025.

To be eligible for the award, students must submit a full paper for review to by the date above.

a) Criteria: The topic of the paper must fall under one or both of MAPOR’s general areas of scholarship, which are (1) public opinion and (2) research methods in public opinion and survey research. When submitting, the author(s) must indicate the topic for which the paper should be considered. The papers need not be quantitative, nor must they report data to qualify for consideration in this competition. Each student may be an author on only one paper submitted to the competition. Papers up to 6,500 words excluding the abstract, tables, figures, and references. The papers will be judged based on the quality of research design, originality, significance, organization, and presentation.

b) Eligibility: To be eligible to enter the student paper competition, students :

  1. Must be enrolled in a graduate or undergraduate program at the time of submission OR received a graduate or undergraduate degree in Winter/Spring/Summer of the award year. Students need not be members of MAPOR but are expected to present at MAPOR of the award year. 
  • Cannot have already won a MAPOR Student Paper Award as an author or co-author.
  • Cannot submit the same paper over multiple years.
  • Papers submitted to this competition should be primarily students’ work, although student author(s) are encouraged to seek advice from a faculty mentor or mentors. This does not preclude recognizing the faculty mentor as a co-author on a later paper that is based on or incorporates some of the work in the student paper. In most cases, the student would be the first author on such a later publication. In cases where faculty mentor(s) are co-authors, in addition to completing the faculty form (see below), a letter must be provided by the faculty mentor or mentors affirming that the student wrote the paper submitted and describing the role(s) the student(s) and faculty played on the paper following Contributors Roles Taxonomy (CRediT) guidelines found here.

c) Award: Each award winner will receive $500 and one free MAPOR conference registration to attend the 2025 MAPOR conference and present their paper.  Additionally, the author(s) of the winning paper will be expected to present their research with a guaranteed spot on the Conference Program at the 81st Annual AAPOR National Conference (2026). 

d) Award Committee: The winning paper and honorable mentions (if applicable) will be selected by a review committee composed of last year’s MAPOR fellow, previous MAPOR fellows, and invited subject-matter reviewers who are MAPOR members.

e) Submission Procedure:

1. Submit an abstract to the MAPOR conference at mapor.org. In addition to a title and abstract, you will be asked to provide all authors’ names, institutional affiliations, and email addresses. Students must provide one or more faculty mentor’s name and e-mail address when submitting their abstract. Abstracts can be submitted until _____.

2. Students who have been accepted for the 2025 conference can have their papers considered for the MAPOR Student Paper Competition.  Here are the requirements:

  • Follow AAPOR Code of Professional Ethics & Practices and make sure this information is included in the appropriate places in the manuscript. (Please pay particular attention to the disclosure elements in Section III).
  • A blinded version of the manuscript must be submitted, wherein all identifiable information about the author(s) and faculty members, acknowledgments, funding information, and other identifiable information is removed or redacted from the manuscript.
  • The blinded manuscript must contain the abstract, the body of the paper, all references, all tables and figures, and any appendices.
  • If possible, limit self-citations, and, if using, include them in the third person.
  • A separate title page containing all author information, including name(s), University affiliation, acknowledgments, funding information, contact information, word count, and the title of the paper.
  • Submit all documents in either Word or PDF format.
  • Provide the contact information for a faculty mentor/co-author. If you do not have a faculty mentor, please choose a faculty mentor who will review and attest that the paper submission to ensure it meets professional standards of readability, grammar, and so forth. This ensures that the reviewers can attend to the substance of the paper.
  • The faculty mentor that the student identifies will also be sent an email asking them to complete an online form which must be completed for a student to be eligible to win the competition. This form will ask them to:
    • List the name of the student entering the competition;
    • Confirm that the submission meets professional standards; and
    • Briefly describe the student’s or students’ role and contributions to the paper following theContributors Roles Taxonomy (CRediT) guidelines found here.
  • A member of MAPOR’s executive board will reach out to all students after the abstract submission deadline to confirm details for paper submission to the competition.
  • Full papers must be submitted to MAPOR by September 30th, 2025, by 11:59 PM Central Time.

Winners will be announced at the Friday Awards Session at the MAPOR conference.

It is possible that in any given year, the committee may determine that no paper meets the threshold for granting an award.

Questions may be addressed to either Mary Losch (mary.losch@uni.edu) or Curtiss Engstrom (cwengstr@umich.edu).

2025 MAPOR Spring Webinar Series

Benjamin Schapiro

Political Polling Insights for Survey Professionals: Margins, Metrics, and Methodology

Friday, April 11th, 1-2pm CT: Polling 101: The Who, What, Why, and How of Modern Political Polling?

Friday, April 25th, 12-1 CT: New Measures of Selection Bias for Pre-Election Polling

Friday, May 2nd 12-1pm CT: Election Polling in the “Blue Wall”: Lessons from Michigan and Wisconsin

Register Here

The Midwest Association for Public Opinion Research (MAPOR) is pleased to announce “Political Polling Insights for Survey Professionals: Margins, Metrics, and Methodology” a three-part webinar series offering a deep dive into the world of political polling. While not all survey professionals work in political contexts, the challenges, innovations, and lessons emerging from election polling offer valuable insights for the broader survey community.

Whether you’re looking to sharpen your methodological toolkit with lessons learned from political polling or better understand how election polling intersects with your work, this series brings timely, relevant perspectives to the table for any survey professional.

This webinar is free for MAPOR members and all students.

Polling 101: The Who, What, Why, and How of Modern Political Polling?

Friday, April 11th, 1-2pm CT

In this webinar, we will cover the basics of modern political polling. We’ll discuss the types of polls that are often conducted, the methods and modes that are often used, and the unique challenges and opportunities that face the polling industry. We’ll situate political polling in the total survey error framework, assess the overall accuracy of the polling industry in recent years, and discuss nonresponse bias and changes people in the industry have made to address it.

Joy WilkeJoy Wilke is the Polling Director at Blue Labs, a progressive data and analytics firm. At Blue Labs, Joy’s team is responsible for survey data collection across the organization, where they work on everything from questionnaire design, sampling, weighting, programming, and budgeting. She’s worked in polling for 13 years, and has previously held polling positions at Civis Analytics, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, and the Gallup Organization. Joy has her Master’s in survey methodology from the University of Michigan, and her PhD in political science from UCLA.

New Measures of Selection Bias for Pre-Election Polling

Friday, April 25th, 12-1 CT

Recent developments in survey statistics have yielded simple, novel measures of the non-ignorable selection bias in estimates of means, proportions, and regression coefficients that may arise due to deviations from ignorable sample selection, where these deviations might be introduced by the sampling mechanism (e.g., non-probability sampling) or survey nonresponse. This webinar will review the computation of these indicators, the data required to compute them, software tools for computing them, and examples of their use and interpretation based on real survey data. An illustration of the use of these measures to assess the selection bias in pre-election polls conducted for the 2020 presidential election will be presented, followed by discussion of the results and suggestions for future research.

Brady WestBrady T. West is a Research Professor in the Survey Methodology Program, located within the Survey Research Center at the Institute for Social Research on the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor (U-M) campus. He earned his PhD from the Michigan Program in Survey and Data Science in 2011. Before that, he received an MA in Applied Statistics from the U-M Statistics Department in 2002, being recognized as an Outstanding First-year Applied Masters student, and a BS in Statistics with Highest Honors and Highest Distinction from the U-M Statistics Department in 2001. His current research interests include the implications of measurement error in auxiliary variables and survey paradata for survey estimation, selection bias in surveys, responsive/adaptive survey design, interviewer effects, and multilevel regression models for clustered and longitudinal data. He is the lead author of a book comparing different statistical software packages in terms of their mixed-effects modeling procedures (Linear Mixed Models: A Practical Guide using Statistical Software, Third Edition, Chapman Hall/CRC Press, 2022), and a second book entitled Applied Survey Data Analysis (with Steven Heeringa and Pat Berglund), the third edition of which will be published by CRC Press in April 2025. He was elected as a Fellow of the American Statistical Association in 2022. 

Webinar 3: Election Polling in the “Blue Wall”: Lessons from Michigan and Wisconsin

Friday, May 2nd 12-1pm CT

Panelists: Emily Swanson (The Associated Press), Charles Franklin (Marquette University) & Barry Burden (University of Wisconsin-Madison)
Moderator: Erik Nisbet, Northwestern University

A moderated panel of academic and industry experts will discuss polling performance in key Midwestern states, examining the forces that influenced outcomes and how polling methodology is evolving in these politically pivotal regions.

Emily Swanson is director of public opinion research at the Associated Press, where she directs AP’s polling team and election night decision desk. The decision desk analyzes vote returns, historical data, and the results of AP VoteCast, AP’s pioneering election research survey, to determine when AP officially calls the winner in elections across the country and explains to the world how we know. Swanson played a key part in the development of AP VoteCast. She also oversees polls conducted by the AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. 
Charles Franklin (Ph.D, Political Science)  is Professor of Law and Public Policy at Marquette Law School, where he directed the Marquette Law School Poll, ranked 2nd of over 500 pollsters nationally by Nate Silver.  Prior to Marquette Law School was Professor of Political Science at the University of Wisconsin Madison for 22 years before leaving to join the Marquette Law School in 2012. He is past president of the Society for Political Methodology and an elected Fellow of the Society. From 2002 to 2020 he was a member of the ABC News election night Decision Desk. 
Barry Burden (Ph.D., Political Science) is Professor of Political Science, Director of the Elections Research Center, and the Lyons Family Chair in Electoral Politics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Burden’s research and teaching focus on U.S. elections, political parties, public opinion, representation, and the U.S. Congress. His recent research examines aspects of election administration and voter participation. Burden earned his Ph.D. at The Ohio State University and was a faculty member at Harvard University before joining UW-Madison in 2006.

Slides Now Available From Pedagogy Hour 2024

Benjamin Schapiro

Trent Buskirk’s Saturday afternoon Pedagogy Hour was one of many highlights of the 2024 MAPOR conference. His talk, “They are Large, but should they be in Charge? Exploring the Possibility and Implausibility of Large Language Models in Survey Science”, addressed many topics about the use of AI in survey research, specifically through the lens of large language models such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini. Trent has asked us to post his slides for your use beyond the conference, and they are now available here.

2024 MAPOR Fall Webinar Series

Benjamin Schapiro

Generative AI 101: How Survey Researchers Can Apply AI

November 8, 2024 at 11:30am CT

Register Here

Claire Kelley and Sarah Kelley

Child Trends

How can generative AI be used to support survey research? In this introductory webinar we will provide a primer on how generative AI works and how it can be used for survey research. This course will cover a (math free) introduction to how generative AI models are built, and introduce core concepts such as API’s,  transformers, prompt engineering, few-shot learning, and fine-tuning. We will provide a brief overview of how generative AI is currently used in survey research with a focus on how learners can apply these concepts to their own research. 

Registration to this webinar gives you access to the live webinar as well as access to the recording for one price. The cost for MAPOR members is $10, $40 for non-members, and FREE for students with a valid .edu email address.

Claire Kelley is a co-program area director of data science and senior data scientist at Child Trends, where she conducts and supports research across all program areas. Her primary research interests focus on the intersection of machine learning and social science, particularly in the domains of health and education.
In her work, Claire blends traditional quantitative methods with machine learning and software engineering. Some of her recent projects include using computer vision to assess bias in news articles, co-authoring an open source software package for fitting mixed effects models with complex survey weights, and creating an interactive JavaScript-based data story about algebra enrollment. In addition to writing software and conducting research, Claire is passionate about creating a community of practice around data science for social research. She regularly presents her research and teaches professional development courses at data science and social science conferences including PyData, the American Association for Public Opinion Research, and the American Education Research Association.
Prior to joining Child Trends, Claire worked as a data scientist at the American Institutes for Research (AIR) and at Merck. At AIR, Claire worked on a variety of data engineering and data science projects and led the data visualization and reporting working group. At Merck, she worked on e-commerce data science, including developing a parallelized system for generating product recommendations and using time series models for forecasting product demand. She holds a bachelor’s degree in statistics from Yale University and a master’s degree in quantitative methods from Columbia University.
Sarah Kelley is a co-program area director of data science and senior data scientist whose research focuses on applying data science techniques— especially natural language processing, computer vision, and machine learning—to answer questions related to social science and education.
She has worked on a diverse set of social science problems, from using social media data to explore public conversations around child abuse in Haiti, to using big data and geospatial statistics to understand drivers of the opioid crisis, to using natural language processing to gain insight into political polarization online. Sarah is particularly excited about the potential of data science methods to augment traditional research methods. She seeks to make her work accessible to general audiences through data visualization. She also hopes to support quantitative researchers by using data science methods to create and integrate rich data sets, providing data access through application programming interfaces, and linking data sets using machine learning methods.
Previously, Sarah was a data scientist at the American Institutes for Research, where she led projects focused on applying computer vision algorithms in education contexts, developing large-scale data processing pipelines, and using machine learning techniques to improve predictive modeling. She holds a bachelor’s degree in sociology from Yale University and a master’s degree in data science from the University of California, Berkeley.

Candidates for Office – 2024-2025

Benjamin Schapiro

It’s time to elect the next MAPOR council members to begin roles in November 2024. We currently have two positions open for election: Vice-President/President-Elect and Associate Conference Chair. After roughly a month of open nominations, we’ve got some wonderful candidates running this year. Their bios are below.

If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to reach out to president@mapor.org.

Vice-President/President-Elect

Benjamin Schapiro

Benjamin Schapiro is a Research Scientist at NORC at the University of Chicago. A graduate of the University of Chicago, he has worked at NORC since 2014, primarily on the General Social Survey. His research focuses on long-term trends in public opinion, mode effects, and the lived experience of the survey interview. Benjamin has been involved with MAPOR since 2014 and has served on the executive committee for the past three years as a member-at-large, and then Communications Chair and the Website Chair. He has also served as the co-chair of the AAPOR Welcoming Committee.

David Sterett

David Sterrett is a Principal Research Scientist in the Public Affairs and Media Research Department at NORC at the University of Chicago. His research focuses on political attitudes, survey methodology, and the public’s news habits. Prior to joining NORC in 2014, he received his PhD in political science from the University of Illinois at Chicago.
David has enjoyed attending every MAPOR conference since 2010. He served as the student liaison for the MAPOR executive council when in graduate school, was the Conference Chair in 2021, and he is currently serving as a member-at-large on the executive council. David also enjoys attending AAPOR conferences and is currently serving on the AAPOR Membership and Chapter Relations Committee.

Associate Conference Chair

Lindsey Witt-Swanson

Lindsey Witt-Swanson is a Research Director in the Public Affairs and Media Research Department at NORC at the University of Chicago working with federal agencies, non-profit organizations, for-profit companies, and academics. She received her BA in Political Science at Creighton University and her MS in Survey Research and Methodology at the University of Nebraska – Lincoln.
Lindsey has served on MAPOR council since 2019 first serving as an at-large council member and currently serving as the Secretary-Treasurer since the position was vacated in April 2021. She also serves as co-treasurer for the International Field Directors and Technologies Conference (IFD&TC) and has been a member of AAPOR and MAPOR since 2011.

2024 Annual Conference

Benjamin Schapiro

49th Annual Conference

Friday, November 22 – Saturday, November 23, 2024

Embassy Suites Chicago Downtown (600 N. State Street)

“Bridging Trends from our Past with Insights for Tomorrow”

Our conference will focus on two important issues facing public opinion research in 2024 – the 2024 election and the acceleration of artificial intelligence. We will explore public opinion trends on social and political issues to understand the election and the key issues that affected the outcome. We will also consider how the rise in artificial intelligence may affect our field and how we collect, analyze and report public opinion data. 

Friday morning short course:

“Beyond the Basics: Advanced Questionnaire Design for Writing Questions about Events and Behaviors”

Jennifer Dykema University of Wisconsin–Madison, MAPOR Fellow 

Nora Cate Schaeffer, University of Wisconsin–Madison, MAPOR Fellow 

Friday afternoon keynote address: 

“Young Women and Men in the U.S.: A Political Mismatch?”

Lydia Saad, Gallup, Director of U.S. Social Research 

Saturday afternoon pedagogy hour:

“They are Large, but should they be in Charge? Exploring the Possibility and Implausibility of Large Language Models in Survey Science”

Trent Buskirk, Old Dominion University, Professor and Data Science Fellow 

Early registration discount ends November 8th at 11:59 p.m. CST

  • Non-student early-bird registration for in-person attendees: $130 ($155 after November 8th). 
  • Student early-bird registration: $50 ($75 after November 8th).

MAPOR is committed to supporting conference attendance regardless of your financial situation.  If you have concerns about the costs for the conference registration or travel expenses related to the conference please visit https://www.mapor.org/support-grants/ to learn more about support grant opportunities.

To help us keep the conference affordable, we encourage you to reserve your hotel room using our conference block at Embassy Suites. Rooms are $209 for a room with 1 King bed or $229 for a room with 2 Double Beds (plus taxes).

Register Here!Final conference programHotel reservation available here

MAPOR 2024 Conference Call for Abstracts

Benjamin Schapiro

The Midwest Association for Public Opinion Research Conference Committee is hard at work planning MAPOR’s

November 22-23, 2024

Embassy Suites Chicago Downtown

600 N. State Street

Call for Abstracts

Submit By July 26th, 2024

The Midwest Association for Public Opinion Research’s annual conference welcomes abstract submissions on any topic related to public opinion research, communication, or survey research methodology. This year, we are accepting submissions for the following types of presentations: papers, posters, and panels of papers.

“Bridging Trends from our Past with Insights for Tomorrow”

Our conference will focus on two important issues facing public opinion research in 2024 – the 2024 election and the acceleration of artificial intelligence. We will explore public opinion trends on social and political issues to understand the election and the key issues that affected the outcome. We will also consider how the rise in artificial intelligence may affect our field and how we collect, analyze and report public opinion data.

We encourage abstract submissions on all facets of research related to public opinion, communication, survey research, and their methodologies. Topics may include but are not limited to: politics and public opinion; social media and public opinion; journalism, media, and public opinion; public opinion on social, economic, and political issues; questionnaire design; data collection issues and strategies; existing and new methods for collecting data from respondents; online panel data collection; nonresponse; total survey error; machine learning, artificial intelligence, big data, and data science; location and geographic information; challenges facing the field due to technological and societal shifts; the ethical use of public opinion and survey data; qualitative and mixed-method research techniques; cross-cultural research; hard-to-reach and historically underrepresented populations; and data quality issues.

Submissions: Abstracts of 300 words or fewer can be submitted here. In addition to a title and abstract, you will be asked to provide the name, institutional affiliation, and email address for all authors. The same author’s name may appear as first author on a maximum of two submissions. To allow for blind review, please remove all personally identifying information from the abstract’s text before submission.

Note to student authors: If the lead author is a student who will be enrolled in an undergraduate or graduate program at the time of the conference, you may submit your paper to the MAPOR Fellows Student Paper Competition (see additional information on the MAPOR Fellows Student Paper Competition, available at www.mapor.org). When submitting a student paper to the competition, the student submitter will be asked to provide the name and e-mail address of a faculty mentor, who will need to endorse the paper when it is submitted. The student paper competition team committee will reach out after the abstract submission window has closed. If you have questions, reach out to president@mapor.org.

Panel Proposals: A panel is a session that focuses on a common theme and includes 4 or 5 participants. A panel proposal requires a description of 300 words or fewer discussing the issues to be addressed and their importance. Also, submissions should list the potential panelists, their institutional affiliations, email addresses, and tentative titles of presentations. Panels related to the conference theme are especially encouraged.

Submission Information: All abstracts must be posted no later than 11:59pm CDT on Friday July 26, 2024. Accepted papers sharing a theme will be scheduled during a paper session. Papers with more individualized topics will be scheduled during a poster session. MAPOR considers both types of presentation equally valuable. All submitters will be notified via e-mail by August 30th of their abstract’s acceptance status. For questions or problems with the submission process, please contact the 2024 MAPOR conference chair, Jenny Marlar at: abstracts@mapor.org.

Travel Grants: The MAPOR Council will be offering two types of support grants for the Annual Conference: the MAPOR Student Support Grant and the MAPOR Colleague Grant. More details on these awards can be found here: https://www.mapor.org/support-grants/.