Category: Annual Conference

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

47th Annual Conference

Held November 18-19, 2022 at Embassy Suites Chicago Downtown!

Reminder to submit your abstracts: Due July 29^th, 2022!

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, methodological briefs, posters, and panels of papers. We are particularly interested in papers that relate to our conference theme:

“Turbulent Times: Public Opinion Research in a Changing Landscape”

There have been substantial (and surprising) shifts in both the way our work is conducted and the results of our work. Combined with the fact that this is a midterm election year, our conference theme asks the MAPOR community to consider the innovations and changes that have occurred in survey research in recent years. 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: questionnaire design; interviewers’ role in data collection; total survey error; politics and public opinion; social media and public opinion; journalism, media, and public opinion; machine learning, 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; public opinion on social, economic, and political issues; data collection issues and strategies; qualitative and mixed-method research techniques; cross-cultural research; recruitment, participation, nonresponse; hard-to-reach populations; existing and new methods for collecting data from respondents; and data quality issues.

Submissions: Abstracts of 300 words or fewer can be submitted at https://cvent.me/Y1Owvq. 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 all authors are students 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. Please note that the criteria for the student paper competition has changed slightly for 2022. Please visit mapor.org for details. 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. The faculty mentor will be asked to send an email of 25 words or fewer endorsing the paper when the full paper is submitted.

Panel Proposals: Panels focus on a common theme and include 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 29, 2022. 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 2nd of their abstract’s acceptance status. For questions or problems with the submission process, please contact the 2022 MAPOR conference chair, Leah Dean at: abstracts@mapor.org.

Travel Grants: The MAPOR Council will be offering two types of support grants for the 2022 Annual Conference: the MAPOR Student Support Grant and the MAPOR Colleague Grant. More details on these awards can be found on mapor.org.

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 one free conference registration. The winning papers also will be accepted for presentation during a session at the May 2023 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 submission OR who received a graduate or undergraduate degree during the preceding academic year. A paper authored by more than one person is considered eligible only if all authors are students according to the above definition. Students need not be members of MAPOR. 

• Students who have already won a MAPOR Student Paper Award are not eligible to submit as a sole or co-author. A student who has not won the award can submit in multiple years, but cannot submit the same paper multiple times (this would be unfair because all student paper competition entries are reviewed and provided with detailed comments by at least one MAPOR Fellow)
• Papers submitted to this competition should be primarily students’ work, although student author(s) are encouraged to seek advice from a faculty mentor. This requirement 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 first author on such a later publication.

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

1. 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, August 12th, 2022. 

2. Students whose papers have been accepted for the 2021 conference can have their papers considered for MAPOR Fellows Student Paper Competition.  Here are the requirements:

• Send full paper in Word format that follows all the instructions below to Allyson Holbrook (allyson@uic.edu) by 11:59pm CDT, Friday, October 7th, 2022.
•  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.
• All papers must adhere to the AAPOR Code of Professional Ethics and Practice. Review the information about the 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.)
• 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 by Friday, October 7:
  • 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

• The faculty mentor you identify will also be sent an email asking them to complete an online form which must be completed in order for a student to be eligible to win the competition. This form will ask them to:
  • The name of the student entering the competition who they have mentored.
  • Confirm that they have reviewed the submission to ensure that it meets professional standards and does not exceed length limitations.
  • Briefly describe the student’s role and contributions to the following aspects of the paper: (1) the formulation of the main research question or topic, (2) reviewing and synthesizing the literature, (3) gathering data, (4) analyzing the data, and (5) writing the paper.

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.

All submissions must include the following:
8. 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.

9. 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

46th Annual Conference 

November 19-20, 2021

Held at the Embassy Suites Chicago Downtown (600 N. State Street) and Virtually (accessible via internet connection)

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, methodological briefs, posters, and panels of papers. We are particularly interested in papers that relate to our conference theme:

Reconnecting and Reevaluating: Assessing the Foundations and Future of Public Opinion Research

This year’s conference theme focuses on the MAPOR community’s chance to come together to reexamine survey, communication, and public opinion research. The 2021 conference provides an opportunity to explore what traditional methods, theories, and principles remain valid and which need further evolution and innovation during this period of significant societal change.  

Conference Program is available here

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.

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