ISRC Travels to AAPOR Conference

Iowa Social Science Research Center (ISRC) staff members Dawn Bower, Cassidy Branch, Lisa Halm-Werner, and Mike Oie traveled to Philadelphia for the 78th Annual American Association for Public Research Opinion (AAPOR) Conference. The theme of this year's AAPOR conference was "Working Together: The Essential Role of Public Opinion Research in Collaborative Science." The group attended different panel sessions that were incredibly insightful for their everyday work and that will help improve the services the ISRC offers to its clients. Some topics of particular interest were the importance of empowering interviewers in facilitating rapport with respondents, research methods for special/difficult to reach populations, emerging trends in public opinion research, and data analysis and weighting. Participants also attended a panel dedicated to presenting outcomes from a research project that the ISRC worked on last fall with University of Iowa faculty and external collaborators. In addition to attending conference activities, the group got to take in the sights, sounds, and food of Philly. They visited the Rocky Statue, the Old City, and ate lots of delicious food, including Cheesesteaks!