"Evaluating New Frontiers in Public Opinion and Social Research"
The continued proliferation of new communication media and technologies presents increased opportunities as well as challenges for public opinion, marketing science and survey researchers. Our conference theme focuses on evaluating the strengths and weaknesses of new methodologies and modes of data collection and exploring the implications for our profession.
This includes new methods of measuring opinion and behavior such as the analysis of social media content (e.g., Facebook), blogs, microblogs (e.g., Twitter), and internet searches. We encourage paper submissions that explore the value of these emerging methodologies to public opinion, marketing science and other social researchers, including the reliability and validity of these approaches.
Also related to the conference theme is the use of newer technologies in research such as smart phones, tablets (e.g., iPad), texting, webcams (e.g., Skype), avatars (e.g., Second Life) and other advances in internet surveys. Submissions are encouraged that explore the integration of these newer modes of data collection with existing approaches and evaluate the implications for data quality.
In this rapidly changing communication environment, this year’s conference theme will provide a forum to discuss the implications of these myriad changes for the public opinion, marketing science and survey research professions.
The conference program will also accept research on other topics of interest to our profession including substantive studies of public opinion on social, economic, and political issues, cross-national and comparative research, political polling and electoral decision-making, the impact of the media on public opinion, and methodological research on cell phones, address-based sampling, nonresponse, noncoverage, sampling, weighting, questionnaire design, web surveys, mixed-mode data collection and other methodological issues.

Conference Homepage

Conference Program (pdf)

Call for Papers (pdf)