WAPOR 78th Annual Conference

The 78th Annual WAPOR Conference has taken place on May 12-15, 2025, in conjunction with the 80th Annual AAPOR Conference, in St. Louis, Missouri, USA. This joint event is a leading forum for discussing advancements in public opinion and survey research, providing an opportunity for networking, learning about the latest research trends, and engaging with diverse experts from across the globe. The venue for the conjoined AAPOR and WAPOR conferences was the St. Louis Union Station. The event will be led by the WAPOR Conference Chair Prof. Wolfgang Aschauer (Paris-Lodron University of Salzburg, Austria).

Conference Theme

The Evolving Landscape of Election Polls: Challenges, Biases, and Innovations in a Polarized World  

In 2024, nearly half of the world’s population is voting in national elections in an era of rising global tensions. Many countries are facing economic threats fueled by geopolitical turmoil as well as military conflicts including the Ukraine war and the war in the Middle East. Economic, social and political turbulence is central to voter dissatisfaction, as seen in elections in all parts of the world, where ruling parties lose support, with polarization and populism is gaining ground. These developments clearly indicate that democracy and the freedoms to conduct and publish opinion polls are threatened. As political landscapes shift, pre-election polls gain more and more importance as seismographs of political developments as well as forecasts for elections.

Polling thus plays a critical role by helping politicians gauge public opinion and enabling voters to understand which candidates or policies are gaining or losing popularity. However, these polls are not always neutral, as they may influence voter behavior, leading to phenomena such as the “bandwagon effect” (where voters support a perceived winning candidate) or the “boomerang effect” (where low polling numbers lead to a negative evaluation of a party). Additionally, polling methods such as telephone interviews and online surveys, are having mixed results in predicting election outcomes. Declining response rates and misrepresentation of sample demographics have been identified as key issues. Social-desirability bias, where respondents withhold true opinions about controversial candidates, further complicates predictions.

Alternative approaches which gain importance due to new technological possibilities of data collection, like monitoring social networks, especially X (formerly Twitter), offer potential solutions. However, the debate over whether social networks can reliably infer political opinions remains open. Online platforms are susceptible to false data from bots, trolls, and misinformation campaigns, making it difficult to distinguish genuine opinions. Moreover, while social networks overcome low response rates, they introduce a misrepresentation bias, as users on these platforms may not represent the broader population.

We might assume that these levels of bias are even more pronounced in illiberal political regimes. Research has demonstrated that in such contexts, voters often misreport their political preferences to pollsters, fearing that their answers may be traced back to them by the regime. The misreporting is especially prevalent when surveys are conducted immediately before elections, a period of heightened political tension.

For our community of world-wide public opinion researchers, it is more than ever important to enable high-quality polls because they provide accurate insights into voter sentiment and the likely outcome of elections. Reliable polls, as a unique voice of the people, help ensure informed decision-making, enable effective campaign strategies, and uphold the integrity of the democratic process by highlighting shifts in public opinion. In an era of increasing political polarization and misinformation, robust polling is essential for reflecting true voter intentions and safeguarding the fairness and transparency of elections.

For WAPOR 2025 it is thus time to reflect on all sorts of polls and surveys which are conducted over the long run or precisely in this unique year for democracy in 2024. We aim for exploring the crucial role that opinion polls play in elections, examining both their value and their limitations. Through discussions on the technical challenges of polling, and their broader impact on political campaigns and voter behavior, we aim to foster a deeper understanding of the various approaches to opinion polling in a global context.

Topics that are in the foreground of this conference are:

• Levels of bias affecting the accuracy of traditional polling methods
• Social Networks and alternative polling methods using Computational Social Science
• The impact of Electoral Cycles and Political Campaigns on Polling
• Polling as a Tool for Manipulation
• Fears of Repercussions and Misreporting (especially in illiberal regimes)
• The Complexity of Polling in high, middle and low income countries

Further topics which address the conference topics from a broader societal perspective are also welcome such as:

• Freedom to conduct and publish public opinion research
• Public opinion and conflict resolution
• Political behavior, participation, and culture in survey research
• Studies on political polarization and current risks of democracy (e.g. the surge of the far right, authoritarianism, value changes pointing to a conservative backlash)
• Geopolitical tensions and the rise of defense and security

As always, we also appreciate fundamental research focusing on our methodological principles such as:

• Methodological challenges and improvements in the areas of sampling, survey design, survey response and non-response as well as measurement errors
• Panel studies, longitudinal surveys and established survey programs nationally monitoring public opinion
• Comparative research as well as international and global survey projects
• Cross-cultural concerns in data collection and measurement issues
• Data archiving for the advancement of humanity
• News, media, journalism, and public opinion
• Artificial Intelligence (AI) challenges in public opinion research and survey methods
• Big data, sentiment analysis and machine learning
• Alternative methods to measure public opinion

WAPOR Conference Committee 2025

Chair: Wolfgang Aschauer, Paris Lodron University Salzburg, Austria

Members:

• Jonathan Evans, Pew Research, USA
• Chase Harrison, Harvard University, USA
• Timothy Johnson, NORC at the University of Chicago, USA
• Olga Kamenchuk, Northwestern University, USA
• Henning Silber, GESIS, Germany

Paper Awards

Naomi C. Turner Award

The Naomi C. Turner Prize is presented at the WAPOR annual conference for the best graduate student paper. This prize was endowed by WAPOR past president Fred Turner in memory of his mother. Fred was president of WAPOR in 1989-1990. A special thank you to the Turner Prize committee, including Thomas Roessing (Chair), Colin Irwin, Alice Siu, Jui Shrestha, and Rima Sinicke. The committee is pleased to announce that the winner of the 2025 Naomi Turner prize is Chloe Mortenson (Northwestern University, USA) for the paper “Benefit-Seekers or Principle-Holders? A Behavioral Experiment Assessing Americans’ Preference’s for Democratic Governance”. This paper makes a valuable contribution to our understanding of trust in government within a complex political context. It thoughtfully integrates theoretical perspectives with strong empirical analysis. The methodological approach is robust, and the writing effectively guides the reader through the findings. The study’s insights deepen our grasp of how citizens navigate institutional trust in turbulent times, offering lasting value to both democratic theory and the practice of public policy.

Janet A. Harkness Award

The Janet A. Harkness Award is a joint award of the WAPOR and the American Association for Public Opinion Research (AAPOR). This award is given in memory of Dr. Janet A. Harkness, internationally recognized for her contributions to cross-cultural survey methodology. The award is given for the best paper on multi-national, multi-regional or multi-cultural survey research (aka 3M survey research) produced by a student. Thank you to the members of the Janet Harkness Student Paper Award Committee. These include Chanhoong Leong (Chair), Angela Ambitho, Lydia Repke, Sunghee Lee, Heather Smalley, and Evgenia Kapousouz. The committee is pleased to announce that the winner of the 2025 Janet A. Harkness Award is Phuong Linh Nguyen (University of Essex, UK) for the paper “Studying Language Switching in Multilingual Survey Interviews”. This paper tackles an important and underexamined issue in survey methodology: language switching in multilingual interviews. Drawing on over 800 recorded survey interactions in Zambia, it provides rare empirical insight into how language shifts affect data quality. The author reframes language switching as a signal of interactional difficulty, linking it to cognitive challenges and interviewer behaviour. Using rigorous behavioural coding and multilevel modelling, the paper shows that language switching is both systematic and consequential. The study stands out for its originality, methodological care, and relevance to the global practice of survey research.

Elizabeth H. Nelson Award

The Elizabeth H. Nelson Prize is awarded for best conference paper from a society in transition. This prize was endowed by WAPOR past president Elizabeth Nelson who was president of WAPOR from 1991-1992. Thank you to our review committee members for the Nelson Prize – Eva Aizpurua (Chair), Chase Harrison, Nedal Swehli, Bilal Gilani, and Adam Zammit. The committee is pleased to announce that the winner of the 2025 Elizabeth H. Nelson Award is Nebil Belaam (EMRHOD Consulting, Tunisia) for the paper “What are the factors that lead to better accuracy of pre-election polls in the Tunisian context? Analysis of comparative experiences between the 2019 and 2024 elections”.This paper presents a comparative analysis of Tunisia’s 2019 and 2024 presidential elections, showing that expectation-based measures on a 0–10 probability scale used in rolling polls yielded more accurate forecasts in 2024 than traditional vote-intention items. It links this improvement to methodological refinements and a smaller candidate field, while also documenting persistent error sources—sampling and social-desirability biases, an extended publication blackout, electoral volatility, and sharply uneven turnout, including youth participation below 6.5% in 2024.

Alexis de Tocqueville Award

De Tocqueville saw democracy as an equation that balanced liberty and equality, concern for the individual and as well as for the community. Given the ongoing relevance of his observations, this award is given annually to a paper presented at the WAPOR conference that is concerned with democracy and public opinion in the world, whether in consolidated or in emerging democracies. A special thank you goes to the 2025 Award Committee, including former WAPOR Presidents Timothy Johnson, Marita Carballo, Claire Durand, Kathy Frankovic, Alejandro Moreno, President Robert Chung and the current President Christian Haerpfer. This year’s the Alexis de Tocqueville Award goes to Thomas Roessing (Germany), Kristina Beckmann (Germany), Leonie Krzistetzko (Germany), Günther Rager (Germany) and Michael Steinbrecher (Germany) for the paper “Tackling the peculiar connection between media skepticism and dissatisfaction with democracy in Germany”. This paper offers a thoughtful and empirically grounded investigation into the link between media skepticism and democratic dissatisfaction in contemporary Germany. Drawing on multi-year survey data across journalists, politicians, and the general public, it reveals how perceptions of journalistic bias—especially the hostile media effect—are associated with declining trust in both journalism and democracy. The authors carefully connect economic anxieties, institutional trust, and political identity to these attitudes, highlighting how material and symbolic factors shape democratic confidence. Its insights are timely, policy-relevant, and of broad interest to scholars of public opinion, media, and democratic resilience.

Robert M. Worcester Award

Every year, the Robert M. Worcester Prize is given in recognition of the best article published in IJPOR – the International Journal of Public Opinion Research, the journal of WAPOR. Evaluation of all papers published in the previous calendar year takes place in two steps, first by the members of the international editorial board of the journal, and then by an award committee appointed by the WAPOR council. A winning article is selected as a result of these two rounds of evaluation. Thank you to the members of the editorial board who participated in the evaluation as well as the members of the WAPOR award committee including Rico Neumann (Chair), Anna Andreenkova, Jaeho Cho, Yariv Tsfati, and Robert Worcester as ex officio member. The recipients of the 2024 Worcester Award are Jennifer Brundidge (The Ohio State University, USA) and Kelly Garrett (The Ohio State University, USA) for the paper “The “Clinching Effect” and Affective Polarization: Exposure to Incivility via Social Media in the Presence of Online New”. Nearly 80 years ago, Lazarsfeld and Merton wrote that direct personal contact and local discussions serve to reinforce the effects of mass media content. Brundidge and Garrett reexamine this ‘clinching effect’ against the backdrop of today’s heavily fragmented and information-rich media environment ripe with divisive debates. Using a three-wave panel survey administered during the 2016 U.S. presidential election, they analyze how digital news use and exposure to incivility on social media – individually and jointly – influence affective partisan polarization. They find that both pro- and counter-attitudinal news use reinforce the effect of exposure to incivility, intensifying affective polarization, but that nonpartisan news use combined with perceived incivility online attenuates that effect. Their study is conceptually sound, analytically rigorous, and provides novel empirical insights into relevant mechanisms of influence in the contemporary media environment and thus a better understanding of the drivers behind polarization.

Helen H. Dinerman Award

This award, given since 1981, honors particularly significant contributions to survey research methodology. The award, presented annually to an individual or individuals, is in memory of Helen Dinerman’s scientific achievements over three decades of public opinion research. Recent recipients of the award include Takashi Inoguchi, Mitchell Seligson, Juan Díez Nicolás, Michael Traugott, and Christian Haerpfer. A special thank you to this year’s review committee, including Robert Chung (Chair), Timothy Johson, Marita Carballo, Frits Spangenberg, and Christian Haerpfer.

WAPOR is pleased to present the 2025 Helen Dinerman Award to Professor Ian McAllister of The Australian National University, in recognition of his exceptional and enduring contributions to the field of public opinion research. Professor McAllister is one of the world’s leading scholars in electoral studies, political behavior, and democratic attitudes. As the long-time director of the Australian Election Study, he has built one of the most respected longitudinal survey programs globally, providing vital insights into how public opinion evolves over time in response to political, institutional, and social change. His comparative work, including contributions to the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems (CSES), has advanced cross-national understanding of voting behavior and democratic legitimacy. Professor McAllister’s career exemplifies the values the Helen Dinerman Award seeks to honour: methodological excellence, international collaboration, and a profound commitment to understanding how citizens engage with democracy. His research has shaped scholarly debates, guided policy conversations, and trained generations of researchers in Australia and beyond. By honouring Ian McAllister, WAPOR recognizes not only a leading figure in public opinion research, but also a lifelong contributor to strengthening democratic inquiry and evidence-based political understanding.

Workshops

The 78th Conference counted with four workshops:

Web Development for Researchers with WordPress

In the early days of the Web, making even small changes to a webpage required developer assistance, leading to the creation of content management systems (CMS) like WordPress. WordPress, the most popular CMS, powers approximately 43% of websites due to its free, open-source nature and ease of use. It is also highly customizable and has numerous plugins, which can enhance its functionality in almost any way imaginable.

Anyone who wants to publish content to the Web should consider WordPress as their website platform.

In this workshop, participants will take a deep dive into the world of WordPress. Topics covered will include:

• Introduction to WordPress: Understand what WordPress is and why it’s the preferred choice for millions of websites worldwide.

• Setting Up Your Website: Step-by-step instructions on how to install WordPress, choose a domain name, and get hosting.

• Navigating the Dashboard: Familiarize yourself with the WordPress interface and learn to manage your site effectively.

• Customizing Your Site: Discover themes and plugins to personalize your website’s appearance and functionality.

• Creating Content: Learn to create posts and pages, format text, and add images to engage your audience.

• Basic SEO Tips: Get introduced to essential SEO practices to increase your site’s visibility and attract more visitors.
  

This workshop is perfect for anyone new to the world of web development. No prior experience or technical knowledge is required—just a willingness to learn and experiment!

Instructor: Prof. Julia Griffey

Julia Griffey is an Associate Professor of Interactive Digital Media and Media Production at Webster University, USA. With over 20 years of experience in web development, Griffey has cultivated a rich and diverse career that bridges technology, design, and education. Holding a BS in Engineering, an MA in Apparel Design, and an MFA in Design, Ms. Griffey integrates technical expertise with creative flair to inspire the next generation of digital innovators. As a published author with two textbooks under Routledge, Griffey contributes significantly to academic literature, sharing insights and methodologies that shape the fields of interactive media and media production. In addition to her academic and professional pursuits, Julia is an avid designer, coder and content creator, and runs several highly trafficked websites. Her unique blend of skills and experiences makes Griffey a distinguished leader and influencer in the realm of interactive media and media production.

Data Analysis After Record Linkage

As a common and detailed approach to data integration, record linkage is essential to match data on the same entity spread across multiple files. At the same time, record linkage is not necessarily error-free. Data belonging to different entities may be linked incorrectly, or links between data on the same entity may be missed. In consequence, the quality of the resulting data can be significantly reduced. It is, therefore, advisable to suitably adjust downstream statistical analysis to account for potential bias caused by data contamination because of incorrect links or sample selection introduced by missing links. However, information pertinent to adjustment may be limited or absent due to reasons such as privacy considerations. This challenge especially occurs in the secondary analysis setting, which is becoming increasingly important as data users may not be able or willing to perform record linkage. This beginner-level course will equip attendees to (1) recognize possible sources and consequences of linkage errors, (2) identify methods to account for linkage errors in the secondary analysis setting, (3) use R software to conduct such data analysis in practice, and (4) discuss open problems based on the existing methodologies and their software implementation. Attendees will have the option to run R code presented, in real-time. Set-up instructions will be made available beforehand, and we will walk through code and output from example case studies step-by-step during the session.

Instructors: Brady T. West; Priyanjali Bukke.

Brady T. West is a Research Professor in the Survey Methodology Program, located within the Survey Research Center at the Institute for Social Research on the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor (U-M) campus. He earned his PhD from the Michigan Program in Survey and Data Science in 2011. Before that, he received an MA in Applied Statistics from the U-M Statistics Department in 2002, being recognized as an Outstanding First-year Applied Masters student, and a BS in Statistics with Highest Honors and Highest Distinction from the U-M Statistics Department in 2001. His current research interests include the implications of measurement error in auxiliary variables and survey paradata for survey estimation, selection bias in surveys, responsive/adaptive survey design, interviewer effects, and multilevel regression models for clustered and longitudinal data. He is the lead author of a book comparing different statistical software packages in terms of their mixed-effects modeling procedures (Linear Mixed Models: A Practical Guide using Statistical Software, Third Edition, Chapman Hall/CRC Press, 2022), and he is also the lead author of a second book entitled Applied Survey Data Analysis (with Steven Heeringa and Pat Berglund), the third edition of which will be available in early 2025. He was elected as a Fellow of the American Statistical Association in 2022.

Priyanjali Bukke is a Ph.D. student in Statistics at the University of Virginia. Her research interests include data integration and its relation to data privacy and quality. Supported by the NSF, Priyanjali is involved in a collaborative project under the supervision of Martin Slawski and Brady West to develop a new framework for analyzing data resulting from imperfectly merging files. She is also maintaining open-source software in R to implement this framework.

Developing Distress Protocols for Survey Research Respondents 

When conducting sensitive survey research or working with vulnerable populations, it may be necessary to have a safety protocol in place should research participants experience distress by the topics discussed.

This short course will provide participants an introduction to developing distress protocols for survey respondents, including:

• When and why survey research might need a distress protocol.
• Basic elements of a distress protocol.
• Overview of best practices for developing distress protocols.
• National helplines and resources to include as supporting materials.
• Distress protocols and supporting materials to include in ethics/IRB review package.

Throughout the course, participants will have opportunities to share their own experiences and lessons learned, as well as work in small groups to outline elements required for their own distress protocols.

By the end of the course, participants will be able to: (1) Determine if their project should include a distress protocol; (2) Outline components of a distress protocol appropriate for their project; and (3) Prepare distress protocol materials for inclusion in an ethics/IRB review package.

Anyone who is considering conducting a survey on sensitive topics or with vulnerable populations should attend this course. Prior experience with sensitive topics, vulnerable populations, or distress protocols is not necessary but is welcome.

Instructor: Dr. Mariel McKone Leonard

Mariel McKone Leonard is a survey methodologist with over a decade of experience in the field. Her main areas of research are improving representation of minority groups in research studies, including are methods of probability and non-probability sampling special populations, as well as conducting research within sensitive contexts. In both contexts, her work focuses on innovating and improving methods in an ethical and participant-focused manner. She received her doctorate at the University of Mannheim in 2020, before which she worked at Westat as a research assistant in the Telephone Research Center and the Instrument Design, Evaluation, and Analysis Services group. Additionally, she is a trained crisis counselor.

Considering Questionnaire Design through Multiple Theoretical Lenses

There is a large body of literature on questionnaire design that is constantly evolving to address new methods, modes, and populations. It can be difficult to synthesize this literature into a coherent set of guidelines. This short course will consider questionnaire design through relevant theoretical lenses, with a special emphasis on considering cross-national or cross-cultural surveys. Participants who enroll in the work shop will learn:

• The primary goals of questionnaire design.
• How researchers evaluate questionnaire design.
• How other elements of survey design (e.g., mode, population, topic) affect questionnaire design
• How to think about questionnaire design through four major theoretical lenses:
  • Surveys as a cognitive task.
  • Surveys as a conversation.
  • Surveys as a social interaction.
  • (Some) surveys as a visual processing task.

Throughout the course, participants will have the opportunity to share their own experiences and expertise, as well as being able to ask questions specific to their questionnaire design needs. By the end of the course, participants will be able to: (1) understand the goals of questionnaire design, (2) know how to collect and use survey data to evaluate different questionnaire designs, (3) understand the implications of other aspects of survey design for questionnaire design, and (4) be able to think about a questionnaire through the four relevant theoretical lenses.

Instructor: Prof. Allyson Holbrook

Allyson Holbrook is a Professor of public policy, management, and analytics and psychology (by courtesy) in the College of Urban Planning and Public Affairs at the University of Illinois Chicago (UIC). She is a social psychologist and survey methodologist whose research and teaching addresses survey design, particularly questionnaire design. She has taught at UIC since 2002 and also spent over a decade working on applied survey data collection projects with the UIC Survey Research Laboratory. She is a current co-Editor-in-Chief of the journal Public Opinion Quarterly.