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AAPOR Announces 2020 Award Winners, Honoring Industry Leaders

WASHINGTON, DC, May 15, 2020 — The American Association for Public Opinion Research (AAPOR), the nation's leading association for public opinion and survey research professionals, is pleased to announce our 2020 award winners. These accomplished members of our public opinion and survey research community will be honored during the annual award banquet (Attendee Celebration and Awards) at the 75th Annual Conference which will be held virtually from June 11-12, 2020.

2020 Warren J. Mitofsky Innovators Award

Frauke Kreuter, PhD, University of Maryland, University of Mannheim and Institute for Employment Research (IAB), for her successes combining survey methodology with data science methods and concepts to ensure the future of our field.

The Warren J. Mitofsky Innovators Award recognizes accomplishments in the fields of public opinion and survey research that occurred in the past ten years or that had their primary impact on the field during the past decade. The innovations could consist of new theories, ideas, applications, methodologies or technologies. To be considered for the award, innovations must be publicly documented. The award can be given to individuals, groups or institutions.

2020 Seymour Sudman Student Paper Competition Award

Winner: Felicitas Mittereder, University of Michigan
“A dynamic survival modeling approach to the prediction of web survey breakoff”

Honorable Mention: Samantha Sekar, Stanford University
“Understanding misrepresentation: How policymakers perceive signals from constituents on environmental policies”

The Seymour Sudman Student Paper Competition Award is given as a tribute to Seymour Sudman in memory of his many contributions to survey methodology, his leadership in the AAPOR community and his teaching and mentoring of students in the survey research profession.

2020 Burns "Bud" Roper Fellow Award

Arundati Dandapani, Generation1.ca
Jennifer Acosta, Mathematica
Aleksandra Wec, Mathematica
Alexander Wenz, University of Mannheim
Priya Bajaj, Mathematica
Yanqin Lu, Bowling Green State University
Gary Lerner, Abt Associates

The Burns "Bud" Roper Fellow Award is named for the late Burns "Bud" Roper who provided a substantial bequest in his will. Roper Fellows must demonstrate primary work responsibilities related to survey research or public opinion and have recently started their careers. Fellows receive financial assistance to help them attend the AAPOR Annual Conference and/or participate in conference short courses; most are first-time conference attendees.

2020 AAPOR Policy Impact Award

U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and U.S. Census for the Consumer Expenditure Survey

The AAPOR Policy Impact Award acknowledges that a key purpose of opinion and other survey research is to facilitate well informed decision-making. The award recognizes outstanding research that has had a clear impact on improving policy decisions, practice and discourse, either in the public or private sectors.

2020 AAPOR Public Service Award

Gordon Willis, National Cancer Institute

The AAPOR Public Service Award is intended to recognize and honor outstanding public service and dedication to maintaining AAPOR standards. It recognizes persons who work on behalf of the public sector, and have contributed to the quality of government surveys, data systems, research, leadership, and/or policy. This award is a means for recognizing the service and dedication of persons working in or with the public sector and their dedication to protecting, improving, and maintaining survey research standards and data quality.

2020 AAPOR Book Award

Richard Valliant, Frauke Kreuter and Jill Dever
“Practical Tools for Designing and Weighting Survey Samples”

The AAPOR Book Award recognizes influential books that have stimulated theoretical and scientific research in public opinion; and/or influenced our understanding or application of survey research methodology. Eligibility for the AAPOR Book Award includes any book in the field that is at least three years old (to allow time for books to be read and reviewed), including books published before or during the period covered by the AAPOR list of the Fifty Books That Have Significantly Shaped Public Opinion Research 1946-1995.

2020 AAPOR Student Travel Award

Oluwagbenga Agboola, University of Northern Colorado
Seth Behrends, University of Illinois at Chicago
Christoph Beuthner, GESIS - Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences
Anna Boch, Stanford University
Chandler Case, University of South Carolina
Xiaoyi Deng, University of Maryland
Carlo Duffy, Carnegie Mellon University
Brian Guay, Duke University
Sela Harcey, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Jesse Holzman, University of Illinois at Chicago
Sebastian Kocar, Australian National University
Carmen Leon, University of Castilla-La Mancha
Lingxi Li, University of Michigan
Gustavo Lopez, University of California San Diego
Rita Nassar, Indiana University
Lukas Olbrich, Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg
Shin Young Park, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
Angelica Phillips, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Albert Rodriguez, Michigan State University
Rachel Stenger, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Jerry Timbrook, University of Nebraska-Lincoln

The AAPOR Student Travel Award funds graduate student attendance at the AAPOR Annual Conference. Student Travel Awards help to offset the expense of attending the conference. The awards are offered to students who are in need of financial support to attend the annual conference and experience this important educational and collegial event for public opinion and survey researchers.

2020 Student-Faculty Diversity Pipeline Award

Alejandra Kaplan, Kristen N. Jozkowski, Indiana University-Bloomington
Yingling Liu, Jerry Z. Park, Baylor University
Nancy Toure, Maria Krysan, University of Illinois at Chicago
Ayana Best, Sara Sadhwani, University of Southern California
Natalie Walls, Timothy Barnett, Jacksonville State University
Fernanda Alvarado-Leiton, Zeina Mneimneh, University of Michigan
Cassandra Berice, Tinaz Pavri, Spelman College
Oceane Tanny, Kelly Foster, East Tennessee State University

The Student-Faculty Diversity Pipeline Award are intended to recruit faculty-student “pairs” interested in becoming AAPOR colleagues. The Award targets members of historically underrepresented racial-ethnic groups, interested in the study of public opinion and survey research methodology. AAPOR believes that the scholarly and practical understanding of our discipline is enhanced by the presence and involvement of different perspectives and creative thought. Such diversity and inclusion leads to consequential research, improved interdisciplinary collaboration, and a greater ability to address, understand, and solve problems related to public opinion and survey research methodology. This award is for students and faculty who identify as: American Indian or Alaska Native; Asian; Black or African American; Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander; and Hispanic or Latino. The award is for waived conference registration and annual membership fee for the student and faculty, and one $800 cash honorarium awarded to the pair to support travel expenses.

2020 Monroe G. Sirken Award

Roger Tourangeau, Westat and University of Michigan

The Sirken Award in Interdisciplinary Survey Research Methods Research is given annually to a distinguished survey researcher for contributions to interdisciplinary survey research that improve the theory and methods of collecting, verifying, processing , presenting or analyzing survey data.

2020 Inclusive Voices Award

Dr. Matthew Desmond, Princeton University

This honor recognizes scholars/researchers, organizations, or institutions who have produced the important data sets, research, and survey methods that have improved the ability to study complex social phenomena related to understudied and underserved, and therefore under-voiced populations.

2020 AAPOR Award for Exceptionally Distinguished Achievement

The award is given for outstanding contribution to the field of public opinion research including: advances in theory, empirical research and methods; improvements in ethical standards; and promotion of understanding among the public, media and/or policy makers.

Due to disruptions in travel caused by the pandemic, the winner of the 2020 AAPOR Award for Exceptionally Distinguished Achievement will be announced at the 76th Annual AAPOR Conference to be held May 13-16, 2021.

2020 WAPOR/AAPOR Janet A. Harkness Student Paper Award

This winner of the 2020 Harkness Student Paper Award will be announced in July 2020.

This award is given in memory of Dr. Harkness, distinguished cross-cultural survey methodologist, who passed away in 2012. Paper topics must be related to the study of multi-national/multi-cultural/multi-lingual survey research (aka 3M survey research),
or to the theory and methods of 3M survey research, including statistics and statistical techniques used in such research. Paper topics might include: (a) methodological and/or statistical issues in 3M surveys; (b) public opinion in 3M settings; (c) theoretical issues in the formation, quality, or change in 3M public opinion; and/or (d) substantive findings about 3M public opinion.

For more information on any of these awards, visit aapor.org/Conference-Events/Awards.aspx

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The American Association for Public Opinion Research (AAPOR) is the leading professional organization of public opinion and survey research professionals in the U.S., with members from academia, media, government, the non-profit sector and private industry. AAPOR members embrace the principle that public opinion research is essential to a healthy democracy, providing information crucial to informed policymaking and giving voice to the nation's beliefs, attitudes and desires. It promotes a better public understanding of this role, as well as the sound and ethical conduct and use of public opinion research.

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