October 2019

Summer wasn’t endless after all, and by mid-September Council was meeting in Chicago. AAPOR’s journals – one of AAPOR’s two key scientific efforts – were among the items on our agenda. Both David Dutwin and Tim Johnson reminded us, in different ways, in their presidential addresses about the importance of the science behind surveys and public opinion research. Since its beginnings 75 years ago, AAPOR has played a critical role in the development of that science. Two of AAPOR’s central activities are the annual conference and the journals. The conference and journals are venues where we receive feedback on our work and share what we have learned. These activities -- peer review and dissemination -- are both critical to keeping any science vital.

The AAPOR Executive Council Call for Nominations are open! Do you know someone whose expertise and values should be represented on the AAPOR Council? Would you personally like to play a leadership role in AAPOR and have a voice at the table? Each year we ask the AAPOR community to nominate qualified candidates for service on AAPOR’s Executive Council. Council members represent the general membership and provide leadership and oversight for AAPOR’s policies, finances and activities.

The abstract submission site is open through November 8. Submissions on any topic across public opinion, survey, and social science research will be considered! Like prior AAPOR conferences, we review the abstracts following the process described in the Call for Abstracts and send notifications in January 2020. Submit your abstract as a paper or methodological brief, or propose a poster and participate in the new All-AAPOR poster award contest! I also highly encourage self-organized panels around a common theme. Let #AAPOR75 be a platform for your voice!
 

Recently, AAPOR Council has been asked how the association selects locations for the AAPOR Annual Conference and what options are available for us to change future locations. Selecting the right location for the conference is a complex process where Council deliberates the merits of various locations. This deliberation is informed by member feedback, both verbally and from the member survey, as well as by data from past conferences.

The AAPOR Education Committee is now accepting abstract submissions for the third annual AAPOR’s Got Talent (AGT) competition! Deadline to submit AGT abstract is November 15, 2019. As a reminder about past years’ events, this competition allows AAPOR members to develop original ideas for addressing some of the most pressing issues in survey research, and present their ideas to a panel of judges and the AAPOR membership at the annual conference. The audience and the judges then vote for their favorite idea, and a winner is selected based on the votes.

As David Dutwin discussed during his presidential address, AAPOR must improve how it communicates with the public. To do so, the Executive Council, Communications Committee, and Journalist Education Subcommittee have been working with Stanton Communications to prepare for the expected increase in attention to polling during the 2020 election.

Mark Hugo Lopez is the director of global migration and demography research at Pew Research Center and a leading expert in the field of Latino demographic research and in Latino survey research. Mark’s work at Pew Research involves leading the planning of their research agenda on international demographic trends, international migration, US immigration trends, and the US Latino community. He previously oversaw Pew’s Hispanic trends research group.

AAPOR’s Send-A-Speaker (SAS) program is part of our education efforts to reach new and diverse groups of students. Through SAS, we want to send AAPOR members to talk about public opinion and survey research at the undergraduate and graduate research methods classes across the U.S. Right now, the SAS program is looking for both:

• People who are teaching research methods courses in Spring, 2020 who would like to have an AAPOR member give a guest lecture about public opinion and survey methods research.
• AAPOR members who are willing to give guest lectures on these topics (AAPOR has a prepared slide deck that you can use if you choose).

The American Association for Public Opinion Research (AAPOR) and publisher Oxford University Press invite applications and nominations for the position of Editor(s) of Public Opinion Quarterly (POQ). We seek an editor or editorial team with the expertise and enthusiasm to lead the journal. In addition to the typical editorial responsibilities, we also are looking for leadership with innovations and ideas about special issues, forums and debates, securing timely reviews, innovative ways to disseminate the journal’s content, and strategies to increase POQ’s scholarly impact.

The American Association for Public Opinion Research invites applications for the position of Editor (or Co-Editor) of Survey Practice.
 
Survey Practice is an editor-reviewed Open Access e-journal published by AAPOR that aims to provide information on hot topics in survey research and public opinion that is useful to survey and public opinion practitioners, survey researchers, and those interested in survey and polling methods. The articles in Survey Practice emphasize useful and practical information designed to enhance survey quality by providing a forum to share advances in practical survey methods, current information on conditions affecting survey research, and interesting features about surveys and people who work in survey research.

• POQ call for papers for the 2021 special issue that was just launched Friday last week. The call for papers is here.
• POQ Special Issue “Honoring the Work of Eleanor Singer: Recent Advances in Survey Methodology:”
• POQ Highly Cited Articles collection.
• JSSAM High Impact Article collection.

NYAAPOR has gotten off to a great start for the 2019-20 year!

In September, NYAAPOR conducted a “Writing Better Questionnaires” session with David Harris author of the Complete Guide to Writing Questionnaires. Registration for the session included a copy of his book.

NYAAPOR recently completed a membership survey and is already transforming the organization based on insights from the survey. Some of the changes we’ve made include: