Presidential Address: Borne of a Renaissance—A Metamorphosis for Our Future

Extract

As most of you know, I’m a practitioner, a mathematical statistician who was lured into the world of survey sampling, project management, survey operations, and social science research. Although I spent the first two decades of my career in the academic survey research world, the past decade and a half has been embedded in public policy research. And for those whom I’ve been fortunate enough to work with, you know that I love being much closer to policy research, even to the point of designing qualitative research studies, conducting focus groups and in-depth interviews, and analyzing or synthesizing the data. I still do plenty of design work on large-scale probability surveys and do much statistical consulting. The mix is terribly exciting. So, I address you in a much different mindset than where I started 35 years ago. I don’t pretend to be an intellectual or a scholar, but I like to be a creative, big thinker. And my thinking has evolved considerably over the years. I wish to share my thoughts about the future direction of AAPOR to strengthen and advance our reputation as leaders in public opinion and survey research.