Embassy Suites Chicago Downtown (600 N. State Street)
“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 for the last half century. 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. In addition, we will continue to support MAPOR members through sharing insights, challenges, and developments in public opinion research.
Friday morning short course:
“Categorical Analysis of Complex Survey Data in R: A Hands-On Course”
Rebecca J. Powell, Fors Marsh Isabella Velásquez, Posit
Friday afternoon keynote address:
“Consejos del viejito: How using your ‘whole self’ can enhance research insight, build knowledge, and catalyze creativity”
Hon. Robert L. Santos, Former Director of the United States Census Bureau
Saturday afternoon pedagogy hour:
“Of constancy and change: A look at five decades of MAPOR, public opinion, and survey research”
Leah Dean, RTI International Timothy P. Johnson, University of Illinois at Chicago David Weaver, Indiana University K. Vish Viswanath, Harvard University
Early registration discount ends November 7th at 11:59 p.m. CST
Non-student early-bird registration for in-person attendees: $135 ($160 after November 7th).
Student early-bird registration: $50 ($75 after November 7th).
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 $237 for a room with 1 King bed or $257 for a room with 2 Double Beds (plus taxes).
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 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 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 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.
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/.
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.
It’s time to elect the next MAPOR council members to begin roles in November 2023. We currently have three open positions open for election: Vice-president/President-elect, Associate Secretary/Treasurer, and Associate Conference Chair. We have three wonderful candidates, one running for each position. Their bios are listed below.
If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to reach out (president@mapor.org).
Vice-President/President-Elect: Candidate Patrick Hsieh
Y Patrick Hsieh
Y. Patrick Hsieh is a research survey methodologist and digital sociologist in the Survey Methodology Program in RTI International’s Data Practice Area. His expertise includes developing mixed-method research, designing social media campaign for sample recruitment, and integrating digital technologies and technology-enabled research practices, such as crowdsourcing and citizen science, into survey methodology to improve research design and data quality. After the 2015 conference, Patrick has served on the MAPOR Council as the webinar series coordinator between 2015 and 2021, MAPOR Conference Support Committee between 2018 and 2020, the associate conference chair of the 2022 Annual Conference, and is currently organizing the 2023 Annual Conference as the conference chair. He also served in AAPOR’s Public Service Award committee between 2020 and 2022. Patrick earned his Ph.D. in Media, Technology, and Society at Northwestern University’s School of Communication in 2014. Prior to joining RTI International. Patrick’s dissertation has won the best student paper award of MAPOR in 2013 and he has been attending MAPOR since then.
Semilla Stripp is a Senior Research Associate with the Public Affairs and Media Research Department at NORC at the University of Chicago. Semilla joined NORC in 2019 after graduating with a degree in political science from Macalester College, spending much of her first few years working on the data management and delivery team for various elections as part of AP VoteCast. Semilla presented at her first (virtual) MAPOR conference in 2020 and has enjoyed attending in-person ever since to connect with and learn from colleagues and other conference attendees. She appreciates the welcoming attitude towards students and new members and looks forward to the opportunity to contribute to the community in a new role.
Associate Conference Chair: Candidate Beth Fisher
Beth Fisher is a Senior Research Director at NORC at the University of Chicago, where she started her survey research career in 2008. Her area of expertise is field and web survey data collection in social science research, having worked on data collection projects for over 15 years. This will be her first time serving on the MAPOR Council, but she has been a member of AAPOR and MAPOR since 2009 and has presented at both conferences many times. Her current research projects at NORC include the General Social Survey and several projects that collect survey data on indigenous and tribal lands. Other interests include training field staff and leveraging technology to facilitate their work and technological innovations in data collection and quality. Beth received her B.A. in Sociology and Psychology from University of Illinois at Chicago and her Master’s degree in Sociology from Loyola University Chicago. Beth has always encouraged her colleagues to learn and grow through engagement with professional associations, including MAPOR, and is excited to contribute to MAPOR as the associate conference chair in 2023-2024.
Held November 17-18, 2023 at Embassy Suites Chicago Downtown!
“Of Intersections and Opportunities: Exploring the Potentials of Public Opinion Research”
As our research landscape continues to change and evolve since the pandemic, MAPOR hopes to broaden our pursuit of collaboration in the survey and public opinion research disciplines. To continue our learning about the changing research landscape, our conference theme asks the MAPOR community to consider the innovations and changes that have occurred in survey research in recent years. Specifically, we encourage abstract submissions on topics that cut across multiple disciplines and research contexts, such as user/respondent-centered survey design, usability of web or mobile surveys, and the ethical use of public opinion and survey data.
More broadly, we welcome 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; respondent behaviors; respondent recruitment for hard-to-reach populations; nonresponse or data quality assessment; total survey error; emerging technologies or methods for data collection; use of administrative records or alternative data sources for surveys; machine learning and data science; politics and public opinion; social media and public opinion; public opinion on social, economic, and political issues; cross-cultural research; and qualitative and mixed-method research techniques.
2023Conference highlights:
Friday morning short course: “The Mother of Invention: Design of the General Social Survey from 2020-2022 and Beyond”
René Bautista, NORC at the University of Chicago
Friday midday keynote address:
“Bridging the Gap between Theoretical Rigor and Applied Research Goals: Reflections of a Survey Researcher in the Tech Industry”
Greg Holyk, Google
Saturday morning pedagogy hour:
“Broadening the Horizon: Research and Career Development Opportunities for Social and Behavioral Scientists in the Research Industries”
Gina Walejko, Google
Erin Spottswood, Allstate/Portland State University
The Midwest Association for Public Opinion Research Conference Committee is hard at work planning MAPOR’s
48th Annual Conference
Held November 17-18, 2023 at Embassy Suites Chicago Downtown!
Call for Participation: Industry Idea Exchange Session
Extended to August 18th, 2023!
As a multidisciplinary organization, MAPOR values and considers collaboration as the bedrock of our profession and research fields. Besides the innovative research trend learning opportunity from our regular thematic sessions, MAPOR is planning an Industry Idea Exchange session during the conference to enhance our pursuit of collaboration beyond survey and public opinion research communities.
The Industry Idea Exchange session seeks to provide an engaging opportunity for connecting with organizations that conduct research such as marketing, consumers or users, audience, patients, or other social, behavioral, and data sciences research in applied contexts. Topics for the Industry Idea Exchange session may include, but are not limited to, promotion of cutting-edge research toolkits, talent acquisition for research organizations, hiring trends in labor market, and organizational branding.
MAPOR welcomes and encourages researchers, hiring and research managers, career advisors and recruiters, and job seekers working in any applied research field to participate in the Industry Idea Exchange session in our 2023 annual conference for scouting talents, identifying collaboration opportunities, and expanding professional networks.
For participation inquiries, please contact the 2023 MAPOR conference chair, Y. Patrick Hsieh at: abstracts@mapor.org using the subject line “[Industry Idea Exchange Participation] by 11:59 pm CDT on Friday, August 18, 2023.” In your inquiry, please briefly describe the discussion topics you and your organization may want to discuss with other practitioners in the session. The conference committee will orient the outreach session based on the interest and focus of the participants.
The Midwest Association for Public Opinion Research Conference Committee is hard at work planning MAPOR’s
48th Annual Conference
Held November 17-18, 2023 at Embassy Suites Chicago Downtown!
Call for Abstracts
Extended to August 18th, 2023!
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:
“Of Intersections and Opportunities: Exploring the Potentials of Public Opinion Research”
As our research landscape continues to change and evolve since the pandemic, MAPOR hopes to broaden our pursuit of collaboration in the survey and public opinion research disciplines. To continue our learning about the changing research landscape, our conference theme asks the MAPOR community to consider the innovations and changes that have occurred in survey research in recent years. Specifically, we encourage abstract submissions on topics that cut across multiple disciplines and research contexts, such as user/respondent-centered survey design, usability of web or mobile surveys, and the ethical use of public opinion and survey data.
More broadly, we welcome 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; respondent behaviors; respondent recruitment for hard-to-reach populations; nonresponse or data quality assessment; total survey error; emerging technologies or methods for data collection; use of administrative records or alternative data sources for surveys; machine learning and data science; politics and public opinion; social media and public opinion; public opinion on social, economic, and political issues; cross-cultural research; and qualitative and mixed-method research techniques.
Submissions: Please visit the link: https://cvent.me/nwQGaq to submit your abstracts, with a limit of 300 words or fewer. In addition to a title and abstract, you will be asked to provide the name, institutional affiliation, and email address of all authors. The same author’s name may appear as the 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 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 11:59 pm CDT on Friday, August 18, 2023. 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 23 of their abstract’s acceptance status. For questions or problems with the submission process, please contact the 2022 MAPOR conference chair, Y. Patrick Hsieh at: abstracts@mapor.org.
Travel Grants: The MAPOR Council will be offering two types of support grants for the 2023 Annual Conference: the MAPOR Student Support Grant and the MAPOR Colleague Grant. More details on these awards can be found on mapor.org.
