69th Annual Conference-Call for Participation

Sep 14, 2015
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WAPOR 69th Annual Conference
10-12 May 2016
Austin, Texas, United States

Call for Participation
Submission Deadline: Friday, 13 November 2015

The World Association for Public Opinion Research (WAPOR) will hold its 69thannual conference on 10-12 May 2016 in Austin, Texas. The WAPOR conference will convene immediately prior to and overlap with the first day of the American Association for Public Opinion Research (AAPOR) conference. The conference committee welcomes proposals on topics related to public opinion broadly, but particularly welcomes proposals related to this year’s conference theme.

Conference Theme: Public Opinion in Transition

Public opinion is in a transition in many senses of the word. Not only are public attitudes about many different issues changing, so too are the governments, media, and industries that profoundly affect public opinion. Even more, methods for studying public opinion are shifting as classic methods no longer yield the same response rates. We welcome papers that speak to these trends and that expand our theoretical and methodological understanding of how public opinion forms, changes, and functions. We are particularly receptive to new methodologies and analytic strategies, as well as to research targeting the psychological and communicative underpinnings of public opinion. This WAPOR conference will continue the organization’s tradition of embracing cross-cultural work and research examining these issues from a global perspective.

WAPOR welcomes abstract submissions that focus on public opinion topics both old and new. These topics include, but are not restricted to:

  • Public opinion theory and/or methods
  • Voting and elections
  • Media, polling and electoral behavior
  • Media effects on public opinion
  • Social, political, economic, and/or cultural issues
  • Consumer culture and market movements
  • Political culture and participation
  • Polls and elections
  • Comparative research
  • News, journalism and public opinion
  • Survey research and questionnaire design
  • Sampling issues
  • Nonresponse and incentives
  • Measurement issues
  • Cross-cultural concerns in data collection
  • Social media, big data, sentiment analysis, and emerging technologies

Submission Process

Proposals for the conference should be submitted electronically by Friday, November 13, 2015. Unless noted otherwise, only proposals submitted through this website will be considered. Interested parties can access the online submission form at the AAPOR website. All submissions will need to include full contact information for the first author as well as institutional affiliation and email address for each coauthor. After entering their institutional affiliation, submitters will be asked whether their abstract is for WAPOR or AAPOR.

Abstracts should not exceed 300 words. All submissions must be in English, and all accepted works are to be presented in English. WAPOR will accept only two types of submissions:

  • Abstracts for individual research presentations generally include a description of the research project with specific research questions or hypotheses; methods; and results, if available at the time of submission.
  • Abstracts for panel proposals typically comprise four presentations around a common theme. The submission of panel proposals involves: (1) each presenter submitting his/her own individual abstract online, and (2) the panel organizer emailing the conference co-chairs with the following information:
  • “Panel Proposal: [Suggested title]” in the subject line of the email
  • Panel Organizer – name and email
  • Short statement discussing the issues addressed in the panel
  • Titles and authors of each of the abstracts submitted to the site, listed in the order they should appear in the program if accepted

Submitters should receive a system-generated email confirmation of their submission within 24 hours. If this confirmation does not arrive, submitters should log back on to the site to verify that their proposal was accepted correctly in the system. All submitters will be notified of the conference committee’s decision in January 2016.

Queries about the Conference

Questions about the conference should be directed to Conference Co-Chairs Bethany Albertson (balberts@austin.utexas.edu) and Talia Stroud (tstroud@austin.utexas.edu) or WAPOR Executive Coordinator Renae Reis (waporoffice@gmail.com).

About the Conference Site

Austin, the capital of Texas, is also known as the “Live Music Capital of the World.” The city has a vibrant arts and entertainment scene, offers a wide variety of outdoor activities, and is home to world-class museums and restaurants. More information about Austin can be found at http://www.austintexas.org/.

The WAPOR conference will convene at the Hotel Van Zandt, located in Austin’s historic Rainey Street District. Opening in November 2015, this new Kimpton / InterContinental Hotels Group property is offering conference attendees sleeping-room rates of 229 USD (double), 249 USD (triple), and 269 USD (quadruple). The Van Zandt is four blocks from the AAPOR conference hotel.