The Pacific Chapter of the American Association for Public Opinion Research (PAPOR) has had a great year so far. Many members were able to gather together at the AAPOR Annual Conference for AAPOR's New Member and All Chapter Welcome Reception. Those that were not were able to network and catch up on the highlights with our Mini-Conference in June. Thanks to Dean Bonner and PPIC for hosting the event.
The annual AAPOR Membership Drive has begun! If you haven’t already, please renew your membership so you can continue to enjoy all of the many benefits that AAPOR has to offer. You can renew online.
As we approach the end of 2016 and look forward to 2017, I want to thank you for being an AAPOR member this year. You are part of an interdisciplinary community of over 2,200 who share a commitment to high quality public opinion and survey research. The hallmark of AAPOR continues to be our members’ dedication to demonstrating and promoting the core values of collegiality, integrity, rigor and transparency. AAPOR members care deeply about collaboration, education and advancing our field. Thank you for being a part of this incredible AAPOR community.
Beginning in Fall 2016, the Transparency Initiative Coordinating Committee will be highlighting the work of TI member organizations. The first organization chosen by the TICC is the Sarah T. Hughes Field Politics Center at Goucher College. If your organization is not yet a TI member, joining is now easier than ever with our updated website. All AAPOR members should consider becoming members of the Transparency Initiative!
As I write this update, we are counting down days … 21 days until the Election, 28 days until abstracts are due for the 2017 AAPOR Conference, and 213 days until the conference itself. Even though the conference is many days out, preparations are already underway to make this the best one ever. We look forward to telling you about the stimulating programmatic and educational content planned for the conference in upcoming newsletters. Today, I want to tell you about a few of the other exciting things we are working on.
AAPOR has a rich history of members from a variety of areas. We are committed to showcasing these members and their work in our fields. I'm proud to bring you the first profile of notable AAPOR member, Peter Miller.
Peter Miller is a former AAPOR President, having served in that role in 2009 and 2010. One of his biggest accomplishments as AAPOR President was launching the Transparency Initiative, which now encompasses more than 75 survey firms. Over the years, Peter has served AAPOR in many other ways—he was AAPOR’s Standards Chair, its Conference Chair, and, for eight years, the Editor-in-Chief of its flagship journal, Public Opinion Quarterly. Currently, he serves on the Standards Committee, the Transparency Initiative Coordinating Committee and he is the co-Chair of the joint ASA/AAPOR Task Force on Improving the Climate for Surveys.
Following up on some fantastic feedback, the AAPOR TICC committee made some substantial changes to the AAPOR TICC website in effort to make it easier to find key information. Perhaps the most important change will be revising the application portal so that it resides fully on the AAPOR website thereby simplifying the application procedures. We hope to have all the revisions to the website and the new TICC application process completed over the summer. So if your organization hasn’t joined yet or you were frustrated in the past by the application process, give us another chance. We really would love to have almost all AAPOR organizations become TI members.
In conjunction with Poynter.News University, AAPOR has updated the "Understanding and Interpreting Polls" free online course for journalists ahead of the 2016 general election. As the election approaches, journalists are bombarded with data from polls and this course informs media on how to separate the wheat from the chaff to improve reporting about polls and survey results.
The Southern Chapter of AAPOR (SAPOR) spans from Virginia down to Texas. While most of our members are located in Raleigh, NC, where the chapter began almost 40 years ago, the SAPOR board has been actively recruiting members from the rest of the states in our region while also working on adding member benefits and networking opportunities. SAPOR’s membership roster includes many states outside of our region as well
THANK YOU to the nearly 700 of you who participated in the 2016 AAPOR Survey!
The feedback you provided in the annual survey is invaluable and will help us better understand how we can improve AAPOR and our future national conferences. We know you are busy and appreciate your time and feedback. We’ll start sharing results from the survey in next month’s newsletter.
This month we are featuring the Southern Chapter of AAPOR (SAPOR) in our “Chapter Spotlight.” Are you a member of your local chapter? If not, learn more about the chapters here!
In her 2016 Presidential Address, Mollyann Brodie challenged AAPOR to move beyond best intentions to take actions that make our organization the “Big Tent” we want it to be: a place that embraces both the evolving nature of the profession as well as the diversity of perspectives and personal characteristics of our existing and potential members, and multicultural country at large. Doing so, she argued, is not just the right thing to do but vital to our continuing relevance and growth.