The Society for Political Methodology Poster Awards are given for the best poster presented by a graduate student and the best poster presented by a faculty member or other researcher at the annual summer Methodology Meeting of the previous year.
2023 Student Winner: Virtual | |
Recipient | Elisa Wirsching (NYU) |
Work | “High Quality Social Science Embeddings for 157 Languages” |
Description | In “High Quality Social Science Embeddings for 157 Languages,” and relying on Wikipedia corpora, Wirsching et al. outline a promising way to produce word embeddings for a wide array of languages, including many using logographic systems (e.g., Mandarin, Arabic, and Japanese). It has the potential to be a huge public good, as they provide pre-trained embeddings, their corresponding transformation matrices, and subword embeddings --- potentially saving researchers considerable computational and time costs. In addition to giving an impressive presentation of the work, Wirsching has clearly thought a fair amount about validation and dissemination of the measures. |
2023 Student Winner: Application | |
Recipient | Thomas Cao (Stanford) |
Work | “The Weaknesses of Selective Sanctions Against Authoritarian Regimes” |
Description | Thomas Cao’s poster is titled "The Weaknesses of Selective Sanctions Against Authoritarian Regimes." In this study, and using the case of U.S. selective sanctions on Surveillance Technology Firms in China, Cao finds that sanctioned firms received more contracts (6.5 million US dollars) due to selective sanctioning --- the opposite of the intended effect of these sanctions. To identify the causal nature of his findings, Cao considers a series of identification strategies (DID, Triple DID, and Generalized Synthetic Controls) and consistently shows a positive causal effect. In addition to defining credible identification strategies to study an important theory and its implications, Cao offers a comprehensive and clear discussion of his substantive findings. |
2023 Student Winner: Theory | |
Recipient | Melody Huang (Berkeley) |
Work | “Variance-based Sensitivity Models for Weighting Estimators Result in More Informative Bounds” |
Description | In “Variance-based Sensitivity Models for Weighting Estimators Result in More Informative Bounds,” Huang and Pimentel take a variance adjustment approach to estimate valid confidence intervals of the average treatment effect on the treated under unobserved confounding. Huang's proposed method not only produces more stable, and often narrower, bounds than existing sensitivity analysis methods, but also allows researchers to evaluate the robustness of the estimated treatment effects by benchmarking plausible values of residual imbalance against observed covariates. It contributes to the fast-growing literature on sensitivity analysis and significantly improves the accessibility of sensitivity analysis for applied researchers. |
2022 Student Winner: Methods | |
Recipient | Naijia Liu (Princeton University) |
Work | "Latent Factor Approach to Missing not at Random" |
Description | Her poster tackles a common and general problem, especially in survey research: what to do about responses missing not at random (MNAR). In such situations, the usual imputation methods will struggle, and may not work at all. Liu proposes that scholars estimate the latent factor that gives rise to the missingness from other covariates, and provides a straightforward algorithm for this purpose. Liu then provides simulation evidence that this method performs well, and a nice application to recent published work. The committee was impressed with the innovation and thoroughness of the efforts here, and believes a fruitful methodological agenda will follow from this work. |
2022 Student Winner: Applications | |
Recipient | Bryant J. Moy (Washington University in St. Louis) |
Work | Responsiveness in a Fragmented Local Politics" |
Description | His poster considers a substantive problem vital to the functioning of US democracy: whether---and how well---citizens in overlapping governance units (such as cities within counties) are represented by their elected officials. Moy approaches this problem using multilevel post-stratification with survey data, and an implementation of the within between random effects model, to obtain estimates of preferences over time. The poster suggests that local governments are indeed responsive to their citizens, though whether this holds dynamically is less certain. The committee praised this poster for its clarity of modeling, and as an excellent example of the "real world" importance of using advanced methods. |
2022 Faculty Winner | |
Recipient | Adeline Lo (University of Wisconsin Madison) |
Work | "Peer Praise can Promote Empathetic Behavior" (with Jonathan Renshon and Lotem Bassan-Nygate) |
Description | This poster notes the importance of empathy, a vital emotion for many political interactions. The authors attempt to both quantify the relative monetary cost of being empathetic, and to design an intervention that encourages the behavior. In particular, using an innovative online experimental task, the authors show that peer praise leads to empathy by making subjects happier. The committee found the substance of this work fascinating, and its implications far-reaching--- both methodologically and in terms of potential policy for in-group/out-group interactions. The committee also praised the authors' candid discussion of the limits of the techniques they propose. |
2022 Selection Committee: Aaron Kaufman (NYU-Abu Dhabi), Erin Hartman (UC Berkeley), Cyrus Samii (NYU), Betsy Sinclair (WashU), Arthur Spirling (chair, NYU), Michelle Torres (Rice)
Past Recipients
Year | Recipient | Work |
2021 (Student, Methods) | Melody Huang (UCLA) | "Leveraging Observational Outcomes To Improve the Generalization Of Experimental Results" |
2021 (Student, Methods) | Nuannuan Xiang (University of Michigan) | "A Gaussian Process Model for Causal Inference with TSCS Data" |
2021 (Student, Applications) | Erin Rossiter (Washington University in St. Louis) | "The Consequences of Interparty Conversation on Outparty Affect and Stereotypes" |
2021 (Student, Applications) | Luwei Ying (Washington University in St. Louis) | "Religiosity and Secularism: A Text-as-Data Approach to Recover Jihadist Groups’ Rhetorical Strategies" |
2021 (Faculty) | Jay Goodliffe (Brigham Young University) | "Using Latent Transition Analysis to Explain Donor Behavior" |
2020 (Student, Methods) | Shiyao Liu (MIT) | "Informing Complier Average Treatment Effects with Post-Treatment Variables" |
2020 (Student, Applications) | Luke Sanford (UC San Diego) | “Remote Sensing and Synthetic Controls: Measuring the Effects of Land Titling on Agricultural Productivity” |
2020 (Faculty) | David Puelz (University of Chicago) | "A Graph-Theoretic Approach to Causal Inference under Interference" |
2019 (Student, Methods) | Erin Rossiter (Washington University in St. Louis) | "Measuring Visual Messages: Political Violence and Computer Vision" |
2019 (Student, Applications) | Kelsey Shoub (UNC Chapel Hill) | “How Changing Frame Sets Alters Legislative Outcomes in Congress” |
2019 (Faculty) | Erin Hartman (UCLA) | "Equivalence Based Falsification Tests for Regression Discontinuity Designs" |
2018 (Student) | Michelle Torres (Washington University in St. Louis) | "Measuring Visual Messages: Political Violence and Computer Vision" |
2018 (Faculty) | John Jackson (University of Michigan) | "Correct Standard Errors with Clustered Data" |
2017 | Dana Higgins (Harvard) | "Disaggregating Data Using Multiple Imputation: Battle Related Deaths" |
2016 | Anton Strezhnev (Harvard) | "A New Method for Estimating Treatment Effects under 'Truncation-by-Death'" |
2016 | Yuki Shirito (Princeton) | "Topical N-Gram Citation Model" |
2015 | Dean Knox (MIT) | "Identifying Peer Effects under Homophily with an Instrumental Variable: Patronage and Promotion in the Chinese Bureaucracy" |
2015 | Dorothy Kronick (Stanford) | "Ecological Inference with Vote-Share Data" |
2014 | Felipe Nunes (UCLA) | "A Bayesian Two-part Latent Class Model for Longitudinal Government Expenditure Data: Assessing the Impact of Vertical Political Alliances and Vote Support.” |
2013 | Scott Abramson (Princeton) | "Production, Predation and the European State 1152-1789." |
2012 | Brenton Kenkel (University of Rochester) | "Logistic Regression Coefficients with Nonignorable Missing Outcomes." |
2010 | Fernando Daniel (Danny) Hidalgo (UC Berkeley) | "Digital Democracy: The Consequences of Electronic Voting Technology in Brazil." |
2009 | Benjamin Lauderdale (Princeton) | "Does Congress Represent Public Opinion As It Is, or As It Might Be?" |
2009 | Benjamin Goodrich (Harvard) | "Bringing Rank-Minimization Back In." |
2008 | Xun Pang (Washington University in St. Louis) | "Binary and Ordinal Time Series with AR(p) Errors: Bayesian Model Determination for Latent High-Order Markovian Processes." |
2007 | Daniel Hopkins (Harvard) | "Flooded Communities: Using the Post-Katrina Migration as a Quasi-Experiment." |
2007 | Aya Kachi (University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign) | "The Empirical Implications of a Theoretical Model on Coalition Bargaining and Governmental Survival." |
2006 | Jong Hee Park (Washington University in St. Louis) | "Modeling Structural Changes: Bayesian Estimation of Multiple Changepoint Models and State Space Models." |
2005 | Michael Kellermann (Harvard) | "Bayesian estimation of ideal points in the British House of Commons using Early Day Motions." |
2005 | Betsy Sinclair (Caltech) | "Is It Better to Be First or Last? The Ballot Order Effect." |
2004 | Marisa Abrajano (NYU) | "All Style and No Substance? Campaign Advertising for Anglos and Latinos in the U.S." |
2004 | Gabriel Lenz (Princeton) | "Testing for Priming in Two-wave Panels: A Reanalysis of Three Studies Finds Little Evidence of Issue Opinion Priming and Some Evidence of Issue Opinion Change." |
2003 | Hyeok Yong Kwon (Cornell) | "Has Economic Insecurity Produced Left-Wing Voters? A Markov Chain Approach." |
2003 | Sona Nadenichek Golder (NYU) | "Pre-Electoral Coalition Formation." |
2002 | Sunshine Hillygus (Stanford) | "The Dynamics of Voter Decision-making in Election 2000." |
2001 | Joshua D. Clinton (Stanford) | "Representation and the 106th Congress: Legislators’ Voting Behavior and their Geographic and Party Constituencies." |
2000 | Jake Bowers (UC Berkeley) | "Sample Design for Studying Congressional Elections." |
1999 | Kevin Clarke (University of Michigan) | "Testing Nonnested Models of the Democratic Peace." |
1998 | Adam Berinsky (University of Michigan) | "The Two Faces of Public Opinion." |
Past Selection Committees
Year | Committee |
2021 | Michael Bailey, Sarah Bouchat, Patrick Brandt, Charles Crabtree, Thomas Gschwend, Erin Hartman, John Londregan, and Betsy Sinclair |
2020 | Dan Hopkins (chair, UPenn), Pablo Barbera (USC), Adam Glynn (Emory), Molly Roberts (UC San Diego), Kevin Quinn (University of Michigan), Ariel White (MIT) |
2019 (Student, Methods) | Justin Esarey (chair, Rice University), Ines Levin (University of California, Irvine), Chris Lucas (Washington University in St. Louis) |
2019 (Student, Applications) | Mark Pickup (Simon Fraser University), Alex Tahk (chair, University of Wisconsin-Madison), Michelle Torres (University of Wisconsin-Madison) |
2019 (Faculty) | Curt Signorino (chair, University of Rochester), Dan Hopkins (University of Pennsylvania), and Kim Twist (San Diego State University) |
2018 | John Londregan (Chair, Princeton), Adam Berinsky (MIT), Dan Hopkins (University of Pennsylvania), Erin Hartman (University of California, Los Angeles), Melissa Sands (Harvard), Benjamin Lauderdale (LSE) |
2017 | Neal Beck (NYU, chair), Jeff Gill (American), Ines Levin (UC Irvine) and Sara Mitchell (Iowa) |
2016 | Erin Hartman (Princeton/UCLA), Richard Nielsen (MIT), Shana Gadarian (Syracuse), Karen Jusko (Stanford), Maya Sen (Harvard) |
2015 | Arthur Spirling (Chair), Christina Boyd, Devin Caughey, Wendy Tam Cho, Neil Malhotra, Margaret Roberts, Teppei Yamamoto |
2014 | Andrew Martin (Chair), Alexandra Hennessy, Matt Lebo, Maya Sen, Jeff Harden, Rocio Titiunik, Craig Volden |
2013 | Fred Boemke (Chair), Megan Shannon, Jay Goodliffe, Dave Peterson, Michael J. Hanmer, Justin Esarey, James Monogan, Amanda Licht, Jake Bowers |
2012 | Walter Mebane (Chair), Drew Linzer, Robert Erikson, Patrick Brandt, Steve Haptonstahl |
2011 | Walter Mebane (Chair), Drew Linzer, Robert Erikson, Patrick Brandt, Steve Haptonstahl |
2010 | Walter Mebane (Chair), Curtis Signorino, Bill Clark, Drew Linzer, Robert Erikson, Patrick Brandt, Xun Pan, Steve Haptonstahl |
2009 | Suzanna Linn (Chair), Thomas Carsey, Curtis Signorino, Jana von Stein, Bill Clark, Dean Lacy, Drew Linzer, Robert Erikson, Karen Jusko |
2008 | Andrew Whitford (Chair), Cherie Maestas, Tobin Grant, Michael Bailey, Kathy Powers |
2007 | Andrew Whitford (Chair), Jake Bowers, Kris Kanthak, Luke Keele, David Kimball, Matthew Lebo |