AAPOR is governed by a 15-member executive council elected by the full membership each Spring. To ensure consistency in the leadership, the past and incoming presidents work closely with the current president; and current and incoming (associate) Council members also work together.

President Richard A. (Dick) Kulka, PhD., is Group Vice President, Survey Research at Abt Associates Inc. He has corporate oversight for the Survey Sampling and Methodology Division and for Abt SRBI Inc. at Abt Associates. He has had the good fortune of serving on the staff of four major research organizations that span most of the institutional sectors of AAPOR's membership--the SRC at Michigan (1975-1980), RTI (1980- 1989;1994-2005), NORC at the University of Chicago (1989-1994) and Abt Associates.

He has been involved in the design, conduct, and analysis of numerous statistical surveys on health, mental health, and other social policy issues for over 25 years, while also conducting a broad range of applied research on survey research methods. He earned a bachelor's
degree from Tulane University, and a master's degree in sociology and doctorate degree
in social psychology from the University of Michigan.

President-Elect Peter V. Miller is Associate Professor, Department of Communication Studies and Faculty Affiliate, Institute for Policy Research, Northwestern University.

A member of the faculty of Northwestern University for 25 years, he has served as Associate Professor, Van Zelst Research Professor, Director of the Institute for Modern Communication, Chair of the Department of Communication Studies and Associate Dean for External
Programs in the School of Communication. In 1994, he was Communication Advisor to the Electoral Commission of Malawi in that nation's first multi-party elections.

Prior to arriving at Northwestern, he served as Assistant Study Director in the Survey Research Center at the University of Michigan, where he also held appointments as Assistant Professor in the departments of Sociology and Communication and Director of the Detroit Area Study. His research has focused on interviewer and mode effects in survey research, audience measurement, and mass media effects. His current work includes research on surveys of internet use, nonresponse bias in audience surveys and the use of computer animation technology
in survey data collection. He holds A.B. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Michigan.

Past President Nancy A. Mathiowetz, Ph.D., is Professor and Chair, Department of Sociology at the University of Wisconsin- Milwaukee.  Her career in survey methodology has included service in the private sector (Westat, Inc.), the federal government (including the Bureau of the Census and the Department of Health and Human Services) and most recently, the Joint Program in Survey Methodology at the University of Maryland.  She has served as associate editor for Public Opinion Quarterly and the Journal of Official Statistics, and is coeditor of the volume, Measurement Errors in Surveys.  She has published on various topics related to survey methodology and the assessment of the quality of survey data  in venues ranging from the Journal of the American Public Health Association to the Journal of Business and Economic Statistics.  Mathiowetz earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of Wisconsin, a master’s degree in biostatistics from the University of Michigan, and  doctorate degree in sociology, also from the University of Michigan

Conference Chair Vincent Price, Ph.D., is the Steven H. Chaffee Professor of Communication and Political Science in the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania. He completed his doctorate at Stanford University and was formerly chair of the Department of Communication Studies and Faculty Associate with the Center for Political Studies at the University of Michigan.

He has written extensively on mass communication and public opinion, social influence processes, and political communication, and his work has been published in five languages. The recipient of awards for his teaching and research, he is currently pursuing studies on the role of online discussion in shaping public opinion. He has been an advisor to the Canadian Election Study, and currently serves on advisory boards for the National Annenberg Election Survey and the American National Election Studies.

Associate Conference Chair Michael W. Link is Chief Methodologist/VP for Methodological Research at The Nielsen Company. He has a broad base of experience in survey research, having worked previously at Survey Research Laboratory at the University of South Carolina, RTI International, and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. He received his Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of South Carolina.

His research efforts center around developing methodologies for confronting many of the most pressing issues facing survey research, including techniques for improving survey participation and data quality, and methodological issues involving use of multiple modes in data collection.  His current research is focused on the use of address based sampling (ABS) as an alternative to random digit-dialed techniques for general population surveys and on the uses of electronic measurement strategies as replacements for some types of self-reported data.

Councilor-at-Large Scott Keeter, Ph.D., is director of survey research for the Pew Research Center in Washington, DC. He was in academia for much of his career, most recently at George Mason University from 1998 to 2002, and previously at Rutgers University and Virginia Commonwealth University, where he also directed the Survey Research Laboratory from 1988-1991.

Since 1980 he has been an election night analyst of exit polls for NBC News and has provided consultation on survey design and analysis for a variety of organizations. He is author or co-author of papers on non-response bias, telephone survey coverage problems, and other topics in survey methodology, political communications and behavior, and health care. He is also co-author of four books on subjects ranging from political participation and knowledge to religion and politics.

Councilor-at-Large Paul J. Lavrakas is a research psychologist currently working as a methodological research consultant. He served as Vice President and Senior Research Methodologist for Nielsen Media Research from 2000-2007. Prior to 2000, he was a Professor of journalism and communication studies at Northwestern University and Ohio State University. He was also the founding Faculty Director of the Northwestern University Survey Lab and the OSU Center for Survey Research.

His publications include a widely read book on telephone survey methodology; he is also the lead editor for three books on election polling, the news media, and democracy. He served on the Election Night Decision Team of the Voter News Service from 1996-2002 and is serving in a similar capacity with ABC News for the 2008 election.

Secretary/Treasurer Kate Stewart, is a partner in the firm Belden Russonello & Stewart, where she directs all phases of survey and focus group research for non-profit organizations and others.  Her areas of research include public attitudes on the environment, civil liberties, and education. Kate received her MS from the Joint Program in Survey Methodology from the University of Maryland and her undergraduate degree from Haverford College in Pennsylvania. In the past, Kate has been an adjunct professor at American University and has taught classes in public communication research. Kate currently serves on APPOR’s Committee on Education, which has responsibility for coordinating the short course offerings at the annual meeting and working on outreach to audiences outside the research community to build the identity and work of AAPOR.

Associate Secretary/Treasurer John Boyle is Executive Vice President of Abt SRBI Inc. in Silver Spring, MD. Prior to joining SRBI, he was Senior Vice President for Government Research at Louis Harris and Associates. He received his doctorate in political science from Columbia University.

Standards Chair Mary Losch, Ph.D., is Associate Professor of Psychology and the Assistant Director of the University of Northern Iowa Center for Social and Behavioral Research. She received her Ph.D at the University of Iowa where she studied attitudes and psychophysiology with John Cacioppo. She worked in the private sector as a survey research analyst at Frank Magid Associates and then returned to UI as Program Director of the newly established Social Science Institute in 1988. A decade later, she became the Assistant Director of the UNI Center for Social and Behavioral Research. She has conducted a host of survey projects including a number in the areas of public policy, health, and health policy. She has published research in survey methods, social science and health disciplines. Her own funded research focuses on maternal and child health behaviors and attitudes. At UI, she served as vice-chair of the social science IRB and served on the committee charged with drafting the institution’s conflict of interest policy. At UNI, she serves on the IRB and chaired the committee from 2001-2006.

Associate Standards Chair Stephen Blumberg is a senior scientist at the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS), Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. He is the lead statistician and methodologist for the State and Local Area Integrated Telephone Survey (SLAITS). This random-digit-dial survey mechanism regularly fields some of the world's largest telephone surveys on children's health, health care, and well-being.

His research on survey strategies to identify vulnerable populations has been published in journals ranging from the American Journal of Public Health, to Ambulatory Pediatrics and the Journal of Sex Research. Since 2003, he has also written and spoken extensively about the prevalence of wireless-only households and the impact of cell phones on coverage bias for telephone surveys.
He earned his Ph.D. in social psychology from the University of Texas at Austin.

Membership/Chapter Relations Chair Adam Safir is a Statistician at the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Prior to joining BLS, he served on the research staff of RTI International, the Urban Institute, Arbitron, and the University of Maryland Survey Research Center. His primary research interests include methods of questionnaire evaluation, the assessment of nonresponse bias, and related topics in the methodology of consumer expenditure surveys. He completed his undergraduate and graduate work at the University of Maryland (B.A. in Sociology, master's degree in Marketing Research).

Associate Membership/Chapter Relations Chair Nancy Whelchel is the Assistant Director for Survey Research at North Carolina State University. She administers student, alumni, faculty, and staff surveys for the university, conducts focus groups on campus issues, and provides consultation services on faculty and student survey research projects. She serves as the survey expert on the NC State IRB, and chairs the University of North Carolina system's Survey Working Group. She became interested in survey research through her work at the Center for Public Interest Polling while pursuing her doctoral degree at Rutgers University.
 
Communications Chair J. Michael (Mike) Brick, Ph.D., is a Vice President at Westat, where he is Director of the Survey Methods Unit. He is also a research professor in the Joint Program in Survey Methodology at the University of Maryland, where he has taught graduate courses since the inception of the program in 1993. Before joining Westat in 1984, he was with the federal government for 11 years.

He is an editor for Survey Methodology (2001- present),  has served on the Editorial Board for Public Opinion Quarterly (2003-2006), is a Fellow of the American Statistical Association and an elected member of the International Statistical Institute.

His primary research interests are sample design and estimation for large surveys, the theory and practice of telephone surveys including surveying cell phones, nonresponse and bias evaluation, survey quality control, longitudinal surveys, and multi-mode multi-frame survey design. 

Associate Communications Chair Mike Mokrzycki is Director of Polling for The Associated Press, where he has worked since 1985. He leads a Polling Unit that conducts more than 40 surveys a year for AP and with partners, covering a wide range of topics and employing diverse methodologies. He also manages AP's involvement in exit polling and runs AP state analysis of voter surveys on election nights. He helps set standards for AP staff in vetting and reporting surveys, gives training workshops to AP reporters and editors across the country, and maintains an intranet site with poll data archives and related resources.