67th Annual Conference

4-6 September 2014 | Nice, France

WAPOR’s 67th annual conference, “Extensible Public Opinion”, was held on the Mediterranean coast of Nice, France, at the Hotel Radisson Blu. The meeting was coordinated with ESOMAR, whose annual conference took place in Nice immediately after the WAPOR meeting.

Conference Theme

Extensible Public Opinion

The term extensible comes from computer science, where it describes concepts that can be extended in novel ways. The 2014 theme took that idea and turned it toward public opinion: nonstatic, expanding, and shaped by changing ideas, technologies, and methodological possibilities. The program encouraged work that bridged new developments with more established approaches, linking results across domains.

Topics and Areas Welcomed

Papers and sessions were expected to include (and did include) a wide range of substantive and methodological work, such as:

  • Public opinion theory
  • Measurement issues and research designs
  • Sampling issues and designs
  • Response rates and nonresponse error
  • Online surveys
  • Substantive social issues (politics, elections, health, environment)
  • Analysis of electronically collected data (including big data)
  • Cross-national research
  • Sentiment analysis and opinion mining
  • Emerging tools for capturing public opinion
  • Public opinion and intergroup relations
  • Media exposure and public opinion

Awards Granted

  • Naomi C. Turner Prize (best student paper): “Illusions of Knowledge: How the Media Makes us Capable of Participating in Politics”, Mathias Weber & Christina Koehler (University of Mainz).
  • Elizabeth H. Nelson Prize (best paper from a society in transition): “Participation in General Elections and Socio-Political Integration in Four Post-Socialist Countries”, Robert Peter (Institute for Political Science, Centre for Social Sciences, Hungarian Academy of Sciences).