Letter from the President

The clock is winding down on my presidential term, and yet it feels like I just got here. I’ve learned a lot in this year and had the pleasure of working with a great team of Executive Council members and our outstanding AAPOR staff at The Sherwood Group.

I’ve also met a lot of younger AAPOR members during my term and am very confident that the organization that’s meant so much to my professional life will continue to play that role for the next cohorts of survey and opinion researchers.

Your AAPOR Executive Council is charged with the stewardship of the association – to keep it strong, responsive and financially healthy so that it can meet the many goals that the membership has set for the association over the past decades… providing education and professional development opportunities, advocating for the interests of the survey research community, setting and enforcing high standards for the practice of our craft, and more.

Given the important responsibilities of the Executive Council, I could not be more pleased with the outcome of the 2012 elections, and I offer my congratulations to all of the members of the incoming Council. It is an exceptionally talented group. But here’s what’s great: I could have said the same thing even if every election had turned out differently. If you are like me, you probably had to flip a coin on several of the races. I’m really grateful to everyone who agreed to be considered for the election, including a number of people who didn’t make it onto the ballot this year. Your time is coming! Many thanks to Frank Newport and the Nominations Committee; they did a lot of hard work to make your choices in the election so difficult.

The Executive Council has been very busy over the past couple of months managing several big initiatives (I say “managing” because most of the ground-level work is being done by our various committees and the AAPOR staff). One is the Transparency Initiative (TI), which conducted a pilot test earlier this year and is now in the process of evaluating the results and laying plans for a second pilot this summer. Don’t miss the TI session at the conference on Friday, May 18, 4:15 p.m.

Plans are firming up for the new journal, the Journal of Survey Statistics and Methodology, to be published jointly by AAPOR and the American Statistical Association. A subcommittee led by Peter Miller is seeking a publisher for the journal, and if all goes well we hope to see the first issue sometime next year.

The Governance Review Task Force delivered its final report to the Council last month. After more than a year of intense study and discussion, the Task Force recommended a number of steps that AAPOR could take to improve the effectiveness of its governance structure. However, these steps represent evolution rather than revolution. In particular, the task force considered and ultimately rejected the idea of transforming the Executive Council from its current committee-based structure (in which most members are also chairs of committees) to an at-large structure (in which councilors are elected without a specific portfolio). Many organizations use the at-large model, but the advantages do not appear – at least at the present – to be worth the disruption that the change would require.

There is much more going on than I can cover here, so I urge you to attend the business meeting at the conference to hear more about the activities of all of the committees and task forces.

And speaking of the AAPOR Annual Conference… we’re less than a month away and the excitement is building (more below in Conference Chair Dan Merkle’s column). Early registrations have matched or exceeded previous years at comparable time points, and room reservations are quite a bit higher than in past years. There were more papers, posters and presentations submitted than in recent conferences, and the number of exhibitors will set a record as well. The plenary promises to be provocative and informative. The hotel is beautiful and very family-friendly – but also filling up. If you are going to attend and haven’t already made your reservations, you should do so soon. I hope to see all of you there.

Scott Keeter
AAPOR President 2011-2012
[email protected]