WAPOR 2023 | Public Opinion Research in a Technology-Driven World

WAPOR 77th and WAPOR Asia Pacific 7th Joint Annual Conference

28-31 July 2024 ● Seoul, South Korea

The World Association for Public Opinion Research is delighted to announce that our 77th Annual Conference will take place on July 28-31, 2024 in Seoul, South Korea. The 2024 WAPOR conference will be conducted in conjunction with the 7^th Annual Conference of the WAPOR Asia Pacific Regional Chapter. The 2024 WAPOR annual meeting will be hosted by SRC at Sungkyunkwan University and and co-organized together with the Korean Sociological Association, KOSSDA and ISDPR at Seoul National University, KDI School of Public Policy and Management, and PMI. The 2024 conference will be conducted in person. The event will be led by the WAPOR Conference Chair Prof. Wolfgang Aschauer (Paris-Lodron University of Salzburg, Austria), WAPOR Local Conference Chair Prof. Jibum Kim (Sungkyunkwan University, Korea), and WAPOR Asia Pacific 2024 Conference Chair Prof. Seokho Kim (Seoul National University, Korea).

Conference Theme

The Soul of Public Opinion Research: Liberty, Quality and Humanity

WAPOR has met twice after the subside of the global pandemic. In Dubai we reviewed the world’s 75 years of public opinion research development after the last world war, and in Salzburg we discussed the challenges of technology on opinion research. It is time that we look back at the basic values of our profession and discuss how we can overcome all present-day challenges facing humankind without losing sight of our fundamental beliefs.

As a continuation of our Salzburg discussion, we shall continue to explore the challenges posed by internet technologies, social media platforms, artificial intelligence, quantum computing, and a lot more. We will continue to ask questions like: What threats do non-probability samples and AI pose to public opinion research and election forecasting? What are the challenges and opportunities in big data analytics? What are the latest developments in public opinion research, misinformation, and the study of campaigning and voting behavior? But in 2024 we draw our attention to analyzing the role and application of survey research in monitoring public opinion across the world, and how continuous and ongoing innovations in the conduct, analysis and interpretation of public opinion research has helped to make people’s voices heard across the globe. As we head towards the mid-2020s, the world is again facing wars and many unprecedented global challenges, and we need to ask ourselves again and again how public opinion research can mitigate these global problems and crises. So we plan to specifically address questions around the topics what we have learned from public opinion and elite opinion over time and what does the latest public opinion research tell us about the pressing societal issues. We need to study ways to promote positive values, and resolve national, social, ethnic, and even cultural conflicts. We obviously need to protect the right of people’s voices to be heard, thereby bringing liberty and equality to the equation of humanity. We need to go back to these core values. Seoul should be a stop for this soul-searching journey.

As a continuation of our WAPOR tradition, the 2024 conference theme is broad. We will continue our discussion of technology advancement, bring in new topics related to humanistic development, and we will not drop our longstanding ‘classical’ public opinion research topics of importance such as electoral studies, freedom to publish polls, the quality of public opinion research around the world, traditional media research, methodological challenges in public opinion research and so on.

The upcoming conference presentations, posters, and panels will include, but are not limited to, the following topics:

Protecting the core values of public opinion research
Freedom to conduct and publish opinion research
Public opinion and conflict resolution
Public opinion and public diplomacy
Public opinion, policymaking, and survey research
Public opinion, elections, and voting
Political behavior, participation, and culture in survey research
Methodological challenges and improvements in the areas of sampling, measurement, survey design and survey response or non-response
Best practices for stakeholder research and expert surveys
Panel studies, longitudinal surveys and established survey programs nationally monitoring public opinion
Qualitative research
Survey research applications
Comparative research and international survey projects
Cross-cultural concerns in data collection and measurement issues
Data archiving for the advancement of humanity
News, media, journalism, and public opinion
New sources of information on public opinion and the use of social media
Public opinion and misinformation
Advertising online, media and audience research
Artificial Intelligence (AI) challenges in public opinion research and survey methods
Big data, sentiment analysis and machine learning
Public opinion and virtual reality
Digitalization and new sources of information in survey research
E-voting, e-deliberation, e-panels
The potentials and limits of online-surveys
New tools for data visualization
Alternative methods to express public opinion

Abstracts submission

Abstract submission instructions for the 2024 WAPOR conference:

Proposals for the conference should be submitted electronically by January 31, 2024. Only proposals submitted through the conference platform will be considered: https://2024-wapor-conference.events.wapor.org
WAPOR 2024 conference will be held in in-person; both presenters, co-authors and audience are required to attend in person.
To be able to submit a proposal, you must be signed up for a free account at the WAPOR portal (if you are a WAPOR member, you will be asked to enter your usual login and password). However, you do not need to be a WAPOR member to submit a proposal.
In case of proposals featuring multiple co-authors, only the main author (or the presenter) should submit the paper proposal (one time). Co-authors (if any) should be listed during the abstract submission, but they should not submit the same abstract again.
To maximize participation in the WAPOR conference, the number of times any individual can appear as speaker in the final program is limited: any individual can present only one paper. Should you appear as a co-author in multiple papers, please, make sure that other co-authors will attend the conference to present your joint research.
The following types of submission are accepted: research papers in oral format; poster presentations in oral format (authors are required to bring a printed poster themselves); pre-organized panel proposals. Paper and poster presentations can have up to 10 co-authors; pre-organized panels need to have a chair and can include 4-6 papers.
Individual papers will be organized in panels with 4-6 presenters per panel. All poster presentations will take place at the same time, in a format of a networking-style parallel session. Posters can be exhibited at the conference venue during the whole conference duration.
Pre-organized panels should comprise of several submissions: first the convener/ chair needs to submit a panel proposal, then every every presenter needs to submit their abstract individually, indicating the title of the panel where the abstract belongs. All-male panel proposals are not permitted.
All abstracts should not exceed 500 words. All submissions must be in English, and all accepted works are to be presented in English.
Full papers (or presentations) in PDF format will need to be uploaded to the conference platform by July 12, 2024.

Should you have any questions or face any technical issues during the submission, please, contact waporoffice@gmail.com.

Available Paper Awards

WAPOR awards and prizes are intended to recognize significant accomplishments in the Public Opinion field. Specifically, we encourage future advancements through student awards and yearly accomplishments for exemplary papers and presentations at the annual conference. You can find out more about these prizes HERE. If required, full papers must be submitted electronically to waporoffice@gmail.com by the deadline of May 31, 2024 (by 11:59 pm ET).

Sponsorship

WAPOR 77th annual conference is a great opportunity to showcase your products and services to key decision makers in the international survey and public opinion industry. It also provides the opportunity to meet colleagues, share the latest best practices, and promote survey innovation throughout the world. It’s also a fantastic opportunity for us, as an organization, to show our members which organizations support the mission and ideals of WAPOR. Take a moment to look at this year’s sponsorship prospect (Sponsorship prospect 2023). More information on the available sponsorship packages, exhibition and underwriting opportunities is available at the WAPOR website. If you have an idea for an exclusive underwriting opportunity that is not listed, please contact WAPOR Executive Director Dr. Kseniya Kizilova at waporoffice@gmail.com.

WAPOR Conference Committee 2024

Chair: Wolfgang Aschauer, Paris Lodron University Salzburg, Austria

Members:

Yashwant Deshmukh, C-Voter, India/ UAE
Timothy Johnson, NORC at the University of Chicago, USA
Jibum Kim, Sungkyunkwan University, South Korea
Kseniya Kizilova, Executive Director of WAPOR, Austria
Henning Silber, GESIS, Germany

Local Organizing Committee 2024

Chair: Jibum Kim, Seungkyunkwan University