Sharing from WAPOR Leaders (June 2023)

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Note: This document was translated from English into many different languages. In case of any discrepancy or inconsistency between the English version and any other translation, the English version shall always prevail.

June 2023 is an important month for WAPOR, because we started a referendum to amend our constitution. It will be a six-week voting ending around July 28, depending on one’s time zone. Among the most important changes is the expansion of Council into ten posts, all become elected. Other important changes include the introduction of organizational membership, enhancement of many administrative and financial procedures, clarification of roles including those of National Representatives and Regional Chapters. This is an important duty passed onto this Council by the previous one, and I am glad to report here that the work is almost done. I thank members and Council colleagues for spending so much effort in submitting views to us, and deliberating them during Task Forces Meeting, Council Meetings, email discussions and the Open Consultation Meeting. All views received have been discussed thoroughly and prudently, and the final proposal now submitted to membership voting has consolidated the most pressing changes which would bring WAPOR to new heights. It is now up to members to decide whether and how to move forward, we will respect members’ final decision. Please note that if the amendments would go through our referendum, we will be calling for nominations for many elected posts before September 15, and the nomination period will cover our Annual Conference in Salzburg. It will be a great opportunity to discuss the future of WAPOR considering these new changes.

Up to May, I have invited six colleagues to chip in their sharing in this online platform, not counting our Past President who wrote a joint letter with me in January. This month, we have three more colleagues doing the same. They are our Chair of Liaison Committee Christian Haerpfer, Chair of Conference Committee Holli Semetko, and President of our WAPOR Latinoamerica Chapter Fabian Echegaray. Here are the short versions. The long versions, if available, are appended at the end.

• Christian[1]: The WAPOR Liaison Committee is cooperating and liaising with AAPOR, ECPR, ESOMAR, ESRA, IPSA, ISA, UNDP Governance Center and many other international organizations. We invite you to participate at our Annual Conference to be held in Salzburg, the cultural capital of Austria, where the Austrian classical music composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart wrote his most famous operas and concerts. You will have the opportunity to meet and talk with top scholars in international survey research and leading public opinion pollsters from the Americas, Europe, Asia and Africa. If you are planning international and comparative research projects in survey research, or interested in comparative and top-quality public opinion research in specific World Regions, or interested to join the biggest social science survey research programme in the world, the ‘World Values Survey’, please do not hesitate to contact me.
• Holli: It is a pleasure to work with my esteemed colleagues on WAPOR’s 2023 conference in Salzburg. I thank members of the Conference Committee for their creative and dedicated service: Wolfgang Aschauer, Professor in the Department of Political Science and Sociology and local conference chair at Paris Lodron University of Salzburg; Susan Banducci, Professor of Political Science at the University of Exeter, and a Fellow of the British Academy; Yashwant Deshmukh, Past President of WAPOR Asia Pacific, Founder and Director of CVoter International; Asaph Chun, Director General of Statistics Research Institute, Statistics Korea, who is planning our 2024 conference in Seoul; Tim Johnson, Past President of WAPOR and Senior Fellow in the Department of Methodology and Quantitative Social Sciences at NORC; and WAPOR’s outstanding Executive Director Kseniya Kizilova. We all look forward to our meeting in Salzburg!
• Fabian[2]: WAPOR Latinoamérica is celebrating its 16th anniversary this year after its 10th regional conference in Oaxaca, where over 130 practitioners, academics, experts and professionals of public opinion research shared practical and theoretical knowledge, acknowledged challenges to and dilemmas of our industry, debated about solutions and windows of opportunity for better research and dissemination of the stock of learning so far developed. Our next conference will be held in Brazil in April 2025 and all WAPOR colleagues are welcomed. I am honored to lead as president of this organization with a newly elected Board of Directors that took office in May with many goals to accomplish for the next 2 years, including to widen the alliances and partnerships, to expand and bring more benefits to our membership, and to generate a wider repercussion of our research work.

In the coming month or so, while we work hard to prepare ourselves for our Annual Conference, I will focus more on the development of our Regional Chapters, so as to create more synergy and mutual support across the entire WAPOR Community.

Humbly yours,

Robert Chung

WAPOR President

[1] Christian Haerpfer: In my capacity as Chair of the WAPOR Liaison Committee it gives me great pleasure to inform you briefly about our international plans and activities. Our committee is cooperating and liaising with many international organizations including:

• AAPOR, the American Association for Public Opinion Research in Alexandria, Virginia, USA
• ECPR, the European Consortium for Political Research at the University of Essex in Colchester, United Kingdom
• ESOMAR in Amsterdam, Netherlands
• ESRA, the European Survey Research Association at the University of Southampton, United Kingdom
• IPSA, the International Political Science Association at Concordia University in Montreal, Canada
• ISA, the International Sociological Association at the University Complutense in Madrid, Spain
• International Science Council ISC in Paris, France
• UNDP Governance Center in Oslo, Norway.

WAPOR would like to invite you to participate at our Annual Conference, which will take place in September 2023 at the University of Salzburg in the Austrian Alps. Salzburg is the cultural capital of Austria, where the Austrian classical music composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart wrote his most famous operas and concerts. You will have the opportunity to meet and talk with top scholars in international survey research and leading public opinion pollsters from the Americas, Europe, Asia and Africa.

If you are planning international and comparative research projects in survey research, or interested in comparative and top-quality public opinion research in specific World Regions, or interested to join the biggest social science survey research programme in the world, the ‘World Values Survey’, please do not hesitate to get in contact with WAPOR regarding your requests and research interests. We will be more than happy to serve you and deliver top quality and excellent partnership in international and comparative survey research and applied opinion polling, bringing together survey research and the world of public policy across the globe.

[2] Fabian Echegaray: WAPOR Latinoamérica is celebrating its 16th anniversary this year having recently finished its 10th regional conference. We met in Oaxaca, south of Mexico, where over 130 practitioners, academics, experts and professionals of public opinion research shared practical and theoretical knowledge, acknowledged challenges to and dilemmas of our industry, debated about solutions and windows of opportunity for better research and dissemination of the stock of learning so far developed. Our next conference will be held in south of Brazil in April 2025 and all WAPOR colleagues, from all regions, are most welcomed to attend.

I am honored to lead as president of this organization with a newly elected Board of Directors that took office in May with many major goals to accomplish for the next 2 years. One key objective is to widen the alliances and partnerships to bring more benefits to our membership base, expand this base, and generate a wider repercussion of our research work. This has already taken the form of major institutional agreements. For example, with The Roper Center to build-up a larger Latin American Survey DataBank collection freely accesible to dataset donors and to members (with a major discount). Likewise, a formal cooperation deal was signed with RECSM of the Pompeu Fabra University of Barcelona that runs top quality summer and winter programs on survey methodology and advanced statistical analysis; this agreement grants WAPOR Latam members a substantial 30% discount. Lastly, we launched an innovative knowledge repercussion initiative together with the editorial project Latinoamerica21, through which short notes with a journalistic tone are published in their weekly newsletter reaching over 3,500 influencers in the region, and reproduced in 15 major media outlets in Latam, thereby educating a widen audience about the value of surveys to better understand our societies and thus further leveraging WAPOR Latam community public opinion studies.