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.

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/.

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.

2023 Annual Conference

Patrick Hsieh

48th Annual Conference

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.

2023 Conference 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

Caroline Smith, Morning Consult

Yu-Han Jao, Lundbeck

Register Here!Final conference programHotel reservation available here


MAPOR 2023 Conference Call for Participation in Industry Idea Exchange

Patrick Hsieh

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.

MAPOR 2023 Conference Call for Abstracts

Patrick Hsieh

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.

2022 Student Fellowship Program

Hillary Hanson

Deadline extended!!

The Midwest Association for Public Opinion Research is excited to announce its open call for proposals for the 2022 Student Fellowship Program. This is a unique opportunity for students to work with a MAPOR fellow and receive guidance on the development of an original research project. Students selected to take part in the program will be matched with a MAPOR fellow based on the topic of their abstract. The MAPOR Executive Council will choose up to 4 proposals for participation in the program and the selected proposals will be accepted for presentation during the 2022 MAPOR Conference. Each selected student will be awarded $250 and the conference registration will be waived for the authors of the selected proposals. 

Eligibility

All students enrolled in an undergraduate or graduate program on April 17th, 2022 are eligible to participate in the program. If more than one author plans to collaborate, please make sure that all authors are students. The topic of the proposed papers should be related either to public opinion or survey methodology. If the students propose a quantitative study, please, make sure you have access to the data before you submit a proposal. Membership in MAPOR is not required to participate, but students are expected to be MAPOR members at the time of the conference. Preferably, students can submit one proposal as the primary author. Preferably, the participants will attend the conference in person. Students who will be selected for the Student Fellowship Program will not be eligible for the student paper award during this year, but they will be eligible for travel awards.

Procedure

To be considered please submit a proposal to the MAPOR Executive Council for the Student Fellowship Program. The 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. Send the proposal by 11:59 CDT, Sunday, April 17th, 2022. In the email include a subject line that says “MAPOR Student Fellowship Program”. In addition, the student should identify a faculty mentor and ask them to write a letter of recommendation. Both the student proposal and the letter of recommendation should be sent to Kevin Ulrich, ulrichkv@uchicago.edu. The selected students for the Fellowship Program will be announced by May 1st.

Students’ responsibilities

The selected students will be responsible for their communication with their mentor. MAPOR Executive Council will suggest a communication plan. However, the students that will be selected for the Student Fellowship Program can suggest a different communication plan if they wish. Both the student and the mentor should agree upon the communication plan in writing and the communication plan should also be emailed to Kevin Ulrich. The students are expected to work on the paper with the guidance of the mentor. In addition, the students who will be selected will be required to present their paper in MAPOR 2022.

If you have any questions, please email us at ekapou2@uic.edu.