Letter from WAPOR President (April 2023)

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

When I wrote this letter, exactly 100 days have passed since I took office. In my first letter to members, I thanked everyone for entrusting this huge responsibility to me – to further develop WAPOR after its first 75 years. I vowed to do my best, and would use my first 100 days in office to consult and consolidate. Human knowledge progresses exponentially, I hope what we have achieved over the past 75 years can be doubled in the next 7.5 years!

I won’t repeat the importance of our three core values, namely, Liberty, Quality and Humanity. I start with our need to break boundaries – geographical, ethnical, cultural, epistemological and organizational. One small step towards this direction is to promote multilingualism in our community. On March 1, with the support of our Council colleagues, and after assessing the cost and benefit, our WAPOR website began our multilingual journey by installing an auto-translation plug-in, all messages there can now be read in 133 world languages by a simple click. Please try it out!

We now take our Step 2. By this open letter, I would like to call for volunteer translators from our WAPOR family to manually, and thus more properly, translate our key documents into as many human languages as we can afford. If any WAPOR member would like to help, please contact me as soon as possible. We will credit such effort with proper acknowledgement plus some tokens of thank to be decided. We want more human translations of our Constitution, Code of Professional Ethics and Practices, Reports on the Freedom to Publish Opinion Polls, Newsletters, announcements, and prospective country reports to be compiled by our National Representatives.

Other than breaking the language and cultural barrier, quite some efforts have been spent over the past 3 months on identifying organizational barriers. We are studying our Constitution (actually since last year), and two task forces[iv] have been appointed to identify problems and recommend changes, in time for our Annual Conference to be held in Salzburg in September this year. Working backward, we will need to consolidate our proposals for members’ consultation by early June this year. Please stay tuned!

While studying our Constitution, we are constantly reminded of the wisdom of our predecessors who have so carefully implanted the concepts of transparency and accountability in our Constitution. We do not need to wait for any review before revitalizing the operation of committees, the reporting of Executive Council activities to the full Council, and Council activities to the membership. Checking the records, I found that our former presidents started to publicize “President’s Notes” annually in 2017, then “Letters from the President” more or less bimonthly starting 2019, and then more or less quarterly starting 2021 but in many more languages. I will continue this tradition with the following enhancement:

My first letter published in January was a letter jointly written with our Past President Tim Johnson. In this second letter, I have invited three colleagues to chip in their sharings, namely, Secretary-Treasurer Yulia Baskakova, Executive Director Kseniya Kizilova, and Interim President of our Sub-Saharan Africa Chapter Angela Ambitho. They have written in their own style with different focuses, I would just quote a bit from every one of them, and leave it to all of you to read their full text:

• Yulia[i]: As a secretary-treasurer I am responsible for administering the funds of the association and overseeing related procedures. In the past year we revamped the association’s dues structure to make it more equitable by offering affordable membership rates in middle- and low-GDP countries. Another top priority is to set up transparent financial procedures and organizational structures appropriate to a professional association. Our task is to build a robust institutional basis for handling financial and organizational issues in accordance with the principles of good governance, regardless of where the WAPOR leadership is located. Next steps will include organizing a fundraising task force, creating a wider network of WAPOR friends and developing special funds. In the long term, by setting clear, transparent institutional guidelines in accordance with best practices, we will build a stronger foundation for WAPOR’s future.
• Kseniya[ii]: WAPOR Secretariat is responsible for the day-to-day management of the Association’s activities as well as communication with our members and support with their inquiries. Should you have any questions, problems, or suggestions, please, feel free to reach out any time by email at waporoffice@gmail.com. Take a moment to follow WAPOR on social media as well as subscribe to our regular electronic newsletter. In case you have a message that you would like to share with the WAPOR membership, please, send it to WAPOR@listserv.unl.edu. Our monthly webinars offer a great opportunity to learn from the best experts in the field. Finally, for in-person communications, we will be happy to welcome you at this year’s WAPOR annual conference that will take place on September 19-22 in wonderful Salzburg, Austria. Call for papers is open till April 30.
• Angela[iii]: The world changing at an unprecedented pace, with long-established social constructs such as gender, race, nationality, government, economic systems, and intelligence being challenged like never before. They present an opportunity for WAPOR to play a more prominent role in guiding decision-making through the provision of reliable and relevant data to inform policy and societal change. Personally, I am excited to explore ways in which our global association can work more closely with our regional chapters to create a sense of family and togetherness among our members. I invite you to take up membership with our chapter and be part of what portends to be an exciting journey. Towards building a stronger, more connected global family of public opinion researchers that becomes an active contributor of change rather than a passive observer of the same.

I intend to invite all Council colleagues and Chapter Presidents to contribute similar sharings in the rest of this year. To achieve this target, more letters will be published in between my quarterly updates, and more abstracts from our monthly reports compiled by our Executive Director will be dispatched to members in different forms. Since this is my first quarterly update to members, let me abstract the following information from the reports and from our meeting records:

• WAPOR started year 2023 with 241 active members. As of March 31, WAPOR has 346 active members. As for our Chapters, the membership numbers are: Latin America: 41 (including 6 being chapter only), Asia Pacific: 69 (28 being chapter only), WANA: 13 (1 being chapter only), Sub-Saharan Africa: 3 (all with dual membership).
• On January 3, 2023, we published our “Letter from Two WAPOR Presidents (January 2023)”. It was translated into Spanish, Chinese, French, and Arabic.
• In the months of January and February, a number of bulkmails were sent to current and past members to solicit new ideas on WAPOR development. Precious feedbacks have been collected, they will be collated after the 100-day period of consultation and consolidation.
• Our latest membership survey which started on December 16 last year closed on February 1. The Membership Committee has collated the information and more analyses are being run.
• Up to this date, 49 invitations have been sent to appoint or re-appoint National Representatives, they included 3 new appointments, 20 representatives who have served for one term, and 26 who have served for more than two terms. All past National Representatives have been issued certification of appreciation.
• In the first three months of the year, three webinars have been held, first one by WAPOR SSA and then two by WAPOR Global: 

1. February 23, 2023 – Nigeria 2023 Elections: A Defining Moment for Democracy or Continuation of Status Quo? Speakers: Angela Ambitho, Reuben Abati, Pamella Sittoni, Peter Mac Manu, Eniola Bello, Robert Chung, Sonnie Ekwowusi, Franklin Ngwu, Moderator: Paul Nnanwobu
2. February 24, 2023 – Big Data – Big Deal or Bigger Deal Breaker: Sifting through the hype to uncover quality and conundrums with modern data sources; Speaker: Trent Buskirk; Moderator: Gary Langer
3. March 17, 2023 – Reliability and Validity in Convenience-Sample Surveys; Speaker: Jon Krosnick; Moderator: Gary Langer.

• At the time of writing this letter, our 2022 Worldwide Update on The Freedom to Conduct and Publish Opinion Polls is undergoing its final review, it covers 157 countries across six continents.
• Finally, the question of how our WAPOR Secretariat could support them on various administrative and financial tasks, like membership recruitment and maintenance, conference organization, website hosting, and so on, has been discussed in many meetings. All Chapters will be consulted in due course, and a new arrangement is expected to be in place starting from July this year.

I hope I have not bored readers too much with this long letter, I apologize if I did. Breaking barriers does require some effort. Please let me know how I can do better.

Humbly yours,

Robert Chung
WAPOR President

[i] Yulia Baskakova: As a secretary-treasurer I am responsible for administering the funds of the association and overseeing related procedures. WAPOR finances are supported by three legs in almost equal measure: membership fees, income from our journal IJPOR and sponsorship money. The first two cover our operational expenses, including our small secretariat, web activities and journal production. The third is spent almost entirely on organizing the yearly conference, for which we try to keep fees as low as possible.

In the past year we revamped the association’s dues structure to make it more equitable by offering affordable membership rates in middle- and low-GDP countries. This change was intended to be revenue neutral at the start, and hopefully to increase revenue down the line by growing our membership base. Through this and other steps, we do need to enhance WAPOR’s financial position. Fundraising through conference sponsorships and increased exhibitor opportunities is one avenue. In the United States, we also can leverage WAPOR’s nonprofit 501(c)3 tax status, under which donations by U.S. persons are tax deductible. All members with revenue-related suggestions are welcome to contact me.

Another top priority is to set up transparent financial procedures and organizational structures appropriate to a professional association. For many years, WAPOR functioned without clearly defined protocols in areas including banking, disbursements, insurance and recordkeeping. This is an impediment to our development as a global association. Today our secretariat is located in Austria, our legal registration and banking accounts are in the United States and our Council members reside in many countries. Our task is to build a robust institutional basis for handling financial and organizational issues in accordance with the principles of good governance, regardless of where the WAPOR leadership is located.

In the past year we established a Finance Committee as prescribed by the WAPOR Constitution, created a disbursement procedure and clarified our tax status. Our next steps are obtaining insurance for the organization and developing an investment policy. Squaring our organizational corners includes many small items as well, including establishing an official address, setting rules of access to financial accounts and ensuring proper filing and archiving of our tax- and other compliance-related documents.

Chapter support is under review as well. Past financial support for chapters has been handled in an ad-hoc manner, without close coordination with chapters or assurance that we support specific, proposed activities that help promote WAPOR’s goals and enhance its membership. A new system – including an assessment of chapter support within the context of our overall budget realities – is in development.

Next steps will include organizing a fundraising task force, creating a wider network of WAPOR friends and developing special funds. In the long term, by setting clear, transparent institutional guidelines in accordance with best practices, we will build a stronger foundation for WAPOR’s future.

[ii] Kseniya Kizilova: Greetings from the WAPOR Secretariat! WAPOR Secretariat is responsible for the day-to-day management of the Association’s activities as well as communication with our members and support with their inquiries. Being still somewhat new in this role and following the inspirational high standard established by my amazing predecessor Renae Reis, I encourage you to make a better use of all existing WAPOR communication channels to help the Secretariat improve further our work and service to the WAPOR community. Should you have any questions, problems, or suggestions, please, feel free to reach out any time by email at waporoffice@gmail.com. Take a moment to follow WAPOR on social media as well as subscribe to our regular electronic newsletter. In case you have a message that you would like to share with the WAPOR membership, please, send it to WAPOR@listserv.unl.edu. Our monthly webinars offer a great opportunity to learn from the best experts in the field. Finally, for in-person communications, we will be happy to welcome you at this year’s WAPOR annual conference that will take place on September 19-22 in wonderful Salzburg, Austria. Call for papers is open till April 30; I look forward to meeting you at the conference!

[iii] Angela Ambitho: In recent times, we have seen the world changing at an unprecedented pace, with long-established social constructs such as gender, race, nationality, government, economic systems, and intelligence being challenged like never before. This has led to an increase in political extremism, racism, and gender discrimination, among other things. As we take stock of the current global events, we can see that they present an opportunity for WAPOR to play a more prominent role in guiding decision-making through the provision of reliable and relevant data to inform policy and societal change.

Personally, I am excited to explore ways in which our global association can work more closely with our regional chapters to create a sense of family and togetherness among our members. One idea that comes to mind is to hold more joint webinars and conferences, where members from different regional chapters can come together to share their research and insights. These events would not only provide valuable opportunities for knowledge exchange but also foster a sense of community and connection among members.

Another idea is to create a mentoring program, where experienced members from one region can mentor and support newer members from another region. This would be a great way to build relationships across borders and help members feel more connected and supported within the association. Additionally, creating joint research projects that bring together members from different regions to work on common research topics or questions is also a possibility. This would not only create valuable opportunities for collaboration but also help members to gain a better understanding of research practices and perspectives from other regions.

In this technological era, we must ask ourselves how we can bring members closer together more quickly, easily, and frequently. One solution could be to create a user-friendly, interactive online platform where members can connect with each other, share research, and collaborate on projects. This platform could also include resources such as training materials, research tools, and best practices from different regions, helping members to stay up-to-date with the latest developments in public opinion research.

As WAPOR SSA, we welcome all innovative ideas that will help us achieve these goals. We have started making strides in this direction by hosting a successful webinar on the Nigerian elections in collaboration with renowned media editors, electoral experts, and academics from Nigeria, Kenya, and Ghana in February. We are also in the process of fine-tuning our strategic plan to guide our activities going forward, always keeping in mind the bright future that our region holds. Many may not realise that by 2050, a third of the world’s total population will be in Sub-Saharan Africa, boasting of the youngest population. Moreover projections indicate that the region will control 40% of consumer spending, 40% of mobile subscriptions, and nearly 25% of internet penetration, making it an extremely critical and attractive region.

As we prepare for an exciting future, I invite you to take up membership with our chapter and be part of what portends to be an exciting journey. Together, we can work towards building a stronger, more connected global family of public opinion researchers that becomes an active contributor of change rather than a passive observer of the same.

[iv] One Task Force headed by our Vice President will review the National Representative system, Regional Chapters and Liaison activities, another one headed by our Secretary-Treasurer will review the administrative and financial procedures. The Executive Council shall review and approve all changes suggested by the two Task Forces, and also consider and decide on all amendments outside these two areas. All proposed amendments will be submitted to the full Council for endorsement, before they are put to vote by members.