Category: Annual Conference

“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 Fellows Student Paper Competition

44th Annual Conference

November 22-23, 2019

Embassy Suites Chicago Downtown

600 N. State Street

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, one free conference registration and one free ticket to the Friday MAPOR luncheon. The winning papers also will be accepted for presentation during a session at the May 2020 AAPOR conference in Atlanta, GA.

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 Monday, July 1, 2019.
• Students whose papers have been accepted for the 2019 conference can have their papers considered for MAPOR Fellows Student Paper Competition.  Here are the requirements:
  • Send full paper  in Word format to John Stevenson (stevenso@ssc.wisc.edu) by 11:59pm CDT, September 15, 2019.
  • 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 John Stevenson (stevenso@ssc.wisc.edu) 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

Call for Participation 

Midwest Association for Public Opinion Research

44th Annual Conference

November 22-23, 2019

Embassy Suites Chicago Downtown, 600 N. State Street

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:

“Where Methods and Substance Meet:

Reflecting the Present and Shaping the Future of Public Opinion and Survey Research”

This year, our conference theme encourages us to extend the strengths of the MAPOR community in our methodological and substantive research interests and focus on their intersection—how they shape and are shaped by each other. For example, how interviewers’ behaviors shape respondents’ survey answers and vice versa, how methods of gathering public opinion data may shape public opinion, and so forth. 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 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. 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 (see additional information on the 2019 MAPOR Fellows Student Paper Competition, available here). 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 Monday, July 8, 2019. 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 15 of their abstract’s acceptance status. For questions or problems with the submission process, please contact the 2019 MAPOR conference chair, Dana Garbarski at: abstracts@mapor.org.