Announcements

Kevin Ulrich – for Vice President/President-Elect

Patrick Hsieh

Kevin Ulrich is the Director of the University of Chicago Survey Lab. In this role he plans, implements, and oversees data collection and consulting services for academic and non-profit organizations. His expertise includes developing and applying strategies to efficiently maximize recruitment and retention of survey participants. Kevin regularly develops and conducts training on survey methodology and data collection procedures with research assistants and staff. Kevin previously managed the Survey Research Program at Group Health Research Institute (now the Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute). In that role, he oversaw and managed data collection for all survey-related studies and provided methodological consultation to the Institute’s faculty and their collaborators. 

Kevin has been an AAPOR and MAPOR member since 2006. He joined the MAPOR Executive Council in 2015 and served as the webinar coordinator in 2015 and 2016. He was the Associate Secretary Treasurer in 2017 and 2018 and has been the Secretary Treasurer since 2019. In 2019, Kevin led the group that developed MAPOR’s Operational Reserve Policy. Kevin was a member of AAPOR’s online education subcommittee from 2016-2020. He has also served on the Executive Council of the Association of Academic Survey Research Organizations (AASRO). Kevin holds a BA and MA in social science from the University of Chicago. He is a US Navy veteran.

Kevin has significantly benefitted both professionally and personally from being a MAPOR member and is eager to continue his MAPOR service and colleagueship as Vice President/President-Elect.

Bob Davis – for Vice President/President-Elect

Patrick Hsieh

Bob Davis is the president and second generation owner of the public opinion research company Davis Research.  Bob has served on the board of PAPOR for 10 years, including the 3 year president track, membership chair and councilor at large in charge of education.  Bob is an engaged member of the AAPOR membership family including heading up AAPOR’s Task force on TCPA.  A lot has changed in research since his first job in the early 1970’s where his mom paid him $0.25 an hour to tape quarters to mail surveys.  He looks forward to learning from MAPOR and sharing his learning from his years on PAPOR’s council.

2020 Annual Conference

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Why Representation Matters

November 20-21, 2020

Conference Chair: Sara Walsh, NORC at the University of Chicago

Associate Conference Chair: David Sterrett, NORC at the University of Chicago

Our conference theme asks the MAPOR community to consider why representation matters in the work we do everyday. Why do we value representation and why do we strive to achieve it in our polls, our study samples, and in our research design? Where does representation factor into our interviewing and research teams? Why do we place a premium on representative data? We think about representation continually in our daily work and for our conference, let’s gather together and center our discussion on Why Representation Matters. Our conference will feature many interesting sessions on all facets of research related to public opinion, communication, survey research, and their methodologies. We are looking forward to seeing you in November at the conference!

–Sara Walsh, 2020 MAPOR Conference Chair

Click here to view the Final Conference Program!

Information about our past conferences can be found here.

In Memoriam

Patrick Hsieh

MAPOR is very sad to announce the recent death of MAPOR Councilor Ashley Hyon, Vice President of Research & Survey Methods for Marketing Systems Group. In addition to her service to MAPOR as an At-Large Councilor and Webmaster, she was also heavily involved with PANJAAPOR as a prior President and AAPOR through Standard Definitions and other committee work. Ashley left a very deep impression on people and will be missed by many. Please read more about Ashley at the following link https://www.aapor.org/About-Us/In-Memoriam.aspx?utm_source=AAPOR-Informz&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=default.

2020 Student Paper Competition

Patrick Hsieh

MAPOR Fellows Student Paper Competition

45th Annual Conference

November 20-21, 2020

Virtual Location! Accessible anywhere via internet connection

The Midwest Association for Public Opinion Research 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 will alsol be accepted for presentation during a session at the May 2021 AAPOR conference.

Eligibility

For the purposes of this competition, an eligible student is someone enrolled in a graduate or undergraduate program at the time of the conference. A paper authored by more than one person is considered an eligible student paper only if all authors are students according to the above definition. Students need not be members of MAPOR.

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 in order to qualify for consideration in this competition. Each student may be an author on only one paper submitted to the competition.

Procedure

  • Submit an abstract to the MAPOR conference at mapor.org. In addition to a title and abstract, you will be asked to provide the name, institutional affiliation, and email address for all authors. Students must provide the name and e-mail address of a faculty mentor when submitting their abstract. Abstracts can be submitted until 11:59pm CDT on Friday, September 4, 2020.
  • Students whose papers have been accepted for the 2020 conference can have their papers considered for MAPOR Fellows Student Paper Competition.  Here are the requirements:
    • Send full paper  in Word format to Tom Smith at smith-tom@norc.org by 11:59pm CDT, Friday, October 2, 2020.
    • Remove all acknowledgments and other identifying information and run “Inspect” in Word to remove all authorship information that Word stores in the document.
    • Include a title page with title, abstract, and the word count (number of words of text including footnotes).
      • Maximum length is 6,500 words of text including footnotes.
    • Put the following at the end of the manuscript and do not include them in the word count:  tables, references, and appendices.
    • Review the information described on p. 2 of this announcement (under the AAPOR Code of Professional Ethics & Practices) and make sure this information is included in the appropriate places in the manuscript. (For example, include response rate when you describe the data.)
    • Include the following in the email that accompanies your submission:
      • A subject line that says:  MAPOR Student Paper Competition-Student Name
      • A statement that your manuscript includes the information required by the AAPOR Code of Professional Ethics and Practices.
      • The names and email addresses of all authors.
      • The USPS address, phone number, and email address of the contact author.
      • The name and email address of the faculty mentor for the paper.
    • Identify a faculty mentor and ask them to do the following:
      • Review the 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.
      • Review the submission to verify that it does not exceed the length limitation
      • Send a brief email to Tom Smith (smith-tom@norc.org)  by the deadline. The statement should:
        • Have a subject line that says:  MAPOR Student Paper Competition – [student name]
        • State that they have reviewed the submission to ensure that it meets professional standards and does not exceed length limitations
        • Describe the contribution of the student(s) and the contributions (if any) of any faculty to the research design, execution, and writing.  

A committee composed of MAPOR Fellows will judge all papers submitted to the competition. Winners will be announced at the Friday Awards Session.

AAPOR Code of Professional Ethics & Practices

All submissions must abide by the AAPOR Code of Professional Ethics & Practices. Manuscripts that make use of survey data must include, at minimum, the information below from Section III-A of the Code:

A…. [I]nclude the following items in any report of research results or make them available immediately upon release of that report. 

  1. Who sponsored the research study, who conducted it, and who funded it, including, to the extent known, all original funding sources.
  2. The exact wording and presentation of questions and responses whose results are reported.
  3. A definition of the population under study, its geographic location, and a description of the sampling frame used to identify this population. If the sampling frame was provided by a third party, the supplier shall be named. If no frame or list was utilized, this shall be indicated.
  4. A description of the sample design, giving a clear indication of the method by which the respondents were selected (or self-selected) and recruited, along with any quotas or additional sample selection criteria applied within the survey instrument or post-fielding. The description of the sampling frame and sample design should include sufficient detail to determine whether the respondents were selected using probability or non-probability methods.
  5. Sample sizes and a discussion of the precision of the findings, including estimates of sampling error for probability samples and a description of the variables used in any weighting or estimating procedures. The discussion of the precision of the findings should state whether or not the reported margins of sampling error or statistical analyses have been adjusted for the design effect due to clustering and weighting, if any.
  6. Which results are based on parts of the sample, rather than on the total sample, and the size of such parts.
  7. Method and dates of data collection.
  8. All submissions must include the following:
    1. The response rate and details of its calculation (if response rate is not appropriate, the refusal rate). Accurate reporting of the response rate requires consulting the AAPOR Standard Definitions (aapor.org), to identify the appropriate response rate definition. If the AAPOR recommendations are not followed, authors should explain why a nonstandard approach was employed.
    2. For models fitted to the data, the equations of the models should be presented, including the numerical values of the parameter estimates, the respective standard errors, and goodness-of-fit statistics for the model.

In addition, authors need to agree to make other specific information about the study available within 30 days of any request for such materials. This information is listed in Section III-B of the Code located at aapor.org/Standards-Ethics/AAPOR-Code-of-Ethics

2020 Annual Conference

Patrick Hsieh

“Why Representation Matters”

Midwest Association for Public Opinion Research

45th Annual Conference

November 20-21, 2020

Virtual Location! Accessible anywhere via internet connection

The year 2020 marks not only the start of a new decade, but also a year in which the United States will conduct both a presidential election and a decennial census. Given these special events, which are now taking place under the extraordinary circumstances of a global pandemic and national outcry against systemic racism in our institutions and culture, the question of what representation means and why it matters to our research is especially relevant. Our conference theme asks the MAPOR community to consider why representation matters in the work we do everyday. Why do we value representation and why do we strive to achieve it in our polls, our study samples, and in our research design? Where does representation factor into our interviewing and research teams? Why do we place a premium on representative data? We think about representation continually in our daily work and for our conference, let’s gather together and center our discussion on Why Representation Matters.

Registration will open soon!

Preliminary program available soon!

Conference chair: Sara Walsh

Associate conference chair: David Sterrett

MAPOR Council Public Meeting Minutes – April 2020

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MAPOR EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE MONTHLY MEETING AGENDA
April 20th, 2020
12:30 – 2:00 CST/1:30 pm – 3:00pm EST

MAPOR MOMENT of the MONTH: Our MAPOR Moment of the Month is for everyone who contributed to our huge webinar, blowing-out all records. Special thanks to Patrick for organizing that and making it happen during COVID-19.

Attendees: Ned, Justine, Kevin, Ipek, Stephanie, Patrick, Mary, Sara, Leah, Ashley, David

Agenda:
I. Approve February minutes (Ned)

February minutes approved. No March meeting/minutes.

Leah Dean (new member): starting at RTI DC office next week. Volunteering as ad-hoc member of exec council.

II. MAPOR at AAPOR (Ned)
a. Actually may be something
i. Meetings being set-up
Might be something virtual, in conjunction with the AAPOR virtual conference. Is there interest from the chapters to have a mini virtual meeting? Ned supports some type of MAPOR participation – he will continue to join discussions, see how it evolves, and report back.

III. Treasurer’s Report (Kevin)

Checking: $28,562.66
Savings: $45,023.94

Doris Graber listed MAPOR as a remainder beneficiary in her trust. Kevin has been in communication with the legal group distributing the funds for the last few weeks. They indicated the amount to be distributed to MAPOR will be approximately $7,500, which is almost twice their original estimate. They will be sending a check to Kevin within the next week however Kevin may not be able to get the check until the stay at home order has been lifted.

Membership list updates:
334 Members
76 students (23%)
258 non-students (77%)
Tax filing:
MAPOR non-profit status for state and federal is up to date for the year.

Membership survey: 153/528 = 29% RR, AAPOR RR2 (2 partial completes)

Kevin cleaned the dataset and posted a copy of the data to the Google drive. There is an SPSS file available and he will post an excel file today. Kevin asked if someone was willing to create set of response frequencies for the data. An example from last year is posted with this year’s results.

IV. Webinars (Patrick)
a. HUGE Spring webinar with Rebecca Powell
b. Fall: AAPOR short course or other presenters?

Final count was 238 registrants (~127 through AAPOR email); peak 144 attendees (~120 attendees stayed through the end of the session). Comments from people at small local gov’t offices who expressed strong interest in learning R. Variety of fed agencies – FDA, USDA, Census. Overall, a successful publicity event.

AAPOR will still have on-line short courses, so MAPOR could pick one to use as our fall webinar. Also, some suggestions for topics came through member survey.

V. 2020 Conference (Sara/David)
a. When do we come up with a remote plan?
i. Hotel implications?

Discussion: Need to come up with remote plan soon. We need to investigate hotel contract to see by which date we have to make decision. Contract language is not clear. We need to be cautious and not assume we can move forward as normal. Multiple options to consider: keeping dates but going virtual, rescheduling to later date, just skipping the 2020 conference. Need to keep in mind restrictions that universities are putting on travel and non-essential expenditures. Kevin will reach out to CVent and see what solutions they might have for virtual conference hosting. Discussion that we should decide on format before sending out first invitation for participation – need to think about what content is most appropriate for the MAPOR membership (may be different than AAPOR). Should we do a brief survey to members, on the topic of virtual conference? Consensus is that we don’t want to open up to too much input.

Motion to change 2020 conference to remote format. Approved by Council.

Ned will contact hotel.

Will decide on messaging to membership soon – will send out early May.

Discussion about free registration for students, increased emphasis on paper competitions, etc.

b. Speaker Updates: Trent Buskirk has agreed to lead our short course on interactive graphics with R (shout out to Patrick for suggesting him!) and Claudia Deane , VP of Research and polling expert at Pew will lead our keynote (shout out to Jenn Agiesta for suggesting her!)! Sara is still working on a pedagogy hour speaker – like to build on the theme of measuring identities and making research more inclusive and have been looking for folks who work in measuring demographics such as race. If anyone on council has seen or heard of any interesting presentations please reach out!

c. Call for Conference Participation and Student Paper Competition Announcements – will be working on this towards the end of the month.
d. QUESTION: should the call for participation address or include a tentative plan? Eg, we plan to move forward with our schedule as usual (or do we build in more time for abstracts?
e. Student Paper Competition Award Updates – will be included in above announcements. Maybe send separate communication to MAPOR and AAPOR listservs after announcements go out?
f. Abstract management programming and review updates

VI. Communications (Justine)
a. Newsletters for 2020: May (Spring), October) Fall
b. What other communications in spring?

Will include some data from member survey, updates on the decision to go to virtual conference, small segment on MAPOR to AAPOR. Maybe delay the Spring newsletter a bit, until we have more solid information.

VII. Summer/Fall 2020 Mixer (Evgenia/Lindsay)
a. Ann Arbor in August or September?

No discussion today. We’ll see how things evolve. Glad we fit in our Chicago event!

VIII. Past President (Ipek)
a. Student award subcommittee

Will continue paper competition. If virtual conference is free, no compelling reason to pursue making awards.

Evgenia will continue to update the university list, to try to target departments for membership.

IX. Sponsorship (Allison/Mary)

How much drop will there be in sponsorship? Maybe not a big concern because we won’t need as much sponsorship if we don’t have in-person conference. We need to consider how best to frame sponsorship requests – what is compelling in the environment of a virtual conference?

Usually the push for sponsorship is summer, and the goal is to get funds in time to prepare paper conference program.

X. Website (Ashley/Patrick)

Nothing to report.

XI. Other business?

Discussion of communication with members in general – make sure we have solid information before we share it.

For May meeting, Kevin will prepare a review of the budget, and what the impact may be on not holding an in-person conference.

Committee Composition:

I. Conference (Sara, Dana, David)
II. Sponsorship (Allison, Mary)
III. Webinar (Patrick, Lindsay)
IV. Website (Ashley, Patrick)
V. Student Award (Ipek, Ned, Kevin, Dana, Evgenia)

MAPOR Council Public Meeting Minutes – February 2020

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MAPOR EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE MONTHLY MEETING AGENDA
February 17th, 2020
12:30 – 2:00 CST/1:30 pm – 3:00pm EST
Dial-in: 1-866-244-0944; passcode: 5175115#

MAPOR MOMENT of the MONTH: Our MAPOR Moment of the Month is for our Secretary-Treasurer for getting the membership survey ready to launch. Thank you Kevin!
Attendees: Ned, Lindsay, Sara, Patrick, Ipek, Leah, Dana, Kevin, Justine, David, Evgenia, Ed

Agenda:
I. Approve minutes (Ned)
Meeting minutes from both December and January are approved.

II. Membership Survey (Kevin)
Kevin implemented all feedback and has finalized the survey. 313 current members + last year’s members will receive the survey. Protocol will include email invitation with link to survey, plus up to 3 non-response reminders. Kevin will update email communications to reflect Ned’s name, then send out later this week.

Last year, Council was excluded from the survey. Decision to follow same protocol this year.

III. Treasurer’s Report (Kevin)
a. Updates
Checking: $28,224
Savings: $45,023
b. Membership list updates
313 current members, but have not received January list from AAPOR (so may be small number of additional members). Decision to not wait to launch MAPOR survey.
c. Tax filing
Kevin filed federal form this morning. Purpose is to maintain not-for-profit status.

IV. Chicago Mixer: New date (March 10) (Ned/Kevin/Stephanie)
a. Monk’s Pub
b. Plan for roll-out and announcing
This coincides with AAPOR Council meeting. MAPOR will offer 1 drink ticket to everyone who signs in. Kevin will coordinate with Monk’s one week before event to give them a heads up and figure out how exactly to implement drink tickets.

Justine and Ned will plan communications – social media now, then reminder closer to date.

Note that mixer falls on an “election” day (several state primaries), so may be a conflict for some members.

V. Communications (Justine)
a. Launch February newsletter
Draft of the winter newsletter will sent around for feedback later this week.
b. Newsletters for 2020: February (Winter), May (Spring), October) Fall
c. What other communications in winter/spring?
Justine will send around calendar for social media communications, and also running list of newsletter topics, for comment/input.

VI. 2020 Conference (Sara/David)
a. Conference theme
b. Speaker Updates
c. Call for Conference Participation and Student Paper Competition Announcements
d. Student Paper Competition Award Updates
e. Chromebook acquisition: when, what, how many?

Conference theme: Why Representation Matters?

Working on getting speakers lined up. Election, diversity topics. It’s been difficult getting attention of potential speakers – maybe due to election activities. Trying to get speakers lined up by end of February (Sara will share list of potential speakers already contacted)

Calls for participation and student competition application is drafted in March, sent out in early May. Documentation from last few years is available on MAPOR drive, and can be used as templates.

Need to sign hotel contract – Sara will follow up with Ned. Or maybe not… last contract signed may still be in effect. Sara will confirm if what she received was the event order – needs to be compared to 2019 event order and to contract for 2020.

Chromebook purchase – push to spring or early summer. Also need to assess need for laptops once we tour new conference space in hotel.
 

VII. Webinars (Patrick)
a. Spring: Rebecca Powell confirmed
b. Fall: AAPOR short course or other presenters?
Rebecca is confirmed for April 8. Topic is Data Management the Tidy Way (using R, integrating with Tableau, etc.). Info will be in Feb newsletter, and announcements through other media will be made in early March.

Fall webinar/short course plan is not set yet. Patrick will scout potential speakers during AAPOR.

VIII. Summer/Fall 2020 Mixer (Evgenia/Lindsay)
a. Potential cities
b. Who is attending from MAPOR Council?
Ann Arbor and/or Madison in September – keep on radar

IX. Past President (Ipek)
a. Student award subcommittee
Dana, Kevin, Evgenia, Ned and Ipek met to brainstorm on student awards. Spend ~$6000-$8000 per year on student travel award or some type of merit award. When should new award be announced? Needs to be discussed. Want students to be aware of opportunity, but don’t want to compete with paper awards.

X. Sponsorship (Allison/Mary)
No report this month. Ned will follow up.

XI. Website (Ashley/Patrick)
a. Updates to calendar for events
Will update with Chicago mixer, webinar, etc.

XII. AAPOR All Chapter Event (now “official”) Updates (Ned)
a. Ponce City Market on the Friday night
b. Sponsoring photo booth ($1500) and raffling one membership and conference registration

XIII. Other business?
None raised.

Committee Composition:

I. Conference (Sara, Dana, David)
II. Sponsorship (Allison, Mary)
III. Webinar (Patrick)
IV. Website (Ashley, Patrick)
V. Student Award (Ipek, Ned, Kevin, Dana, Evgenia)