From: Nicholas A. Valentino (Principal Investigator), University of
Michigan; Shanto Iyengar (Principal Investigator), Stanford University; D.
Sunshine Hillygus (Associate Principal Investigator), Duke University; and
Daron Shaw (Associate Principal Investigator), University of Texas at Austin
------------------------------

The American National Election Studies <http://www.electionstudies.org>
(ANES) invites ideas for questionnaire content to be included in an
upcoming pilot survey. The ANES 2023 Pilot Study survey will collect data
on a national sample in the late fall of 2023.

The purpose of the pilot survey is to test the measurement qualities and
scientific value of questions for possible inclusion in the ANES 2024 Time
Series Survey. The pilot survey is a critical resource for the ANES
principal investigators as they make difficult decisions about
questionnaire content and design because it allows tests of the
effectiveness of new questions and formats well in advance of the next
presidential election. We invite you to help shape the study by sending us
your ideas for questionnaire innovations.

*Request for Community Input*

The ANES is already working to identify new questions on an array of
topics. Prior to every survey, we seek input from our national advisory
board and, through invitations such as this, from the community of
interested researchers at large. We see this process as a form of
collective brainstorming, ensuring that a wider range of ideas are
considered and ultimately yielding a better questionnaire. Hundreds of
people have submitted ideas to the ANES over the past twelve years and
collectively have had a significant impact on the content of ANES surveys.
Anyone interested in using or improving ANES data is encouraged to provide
input, regardless of their occupation or academic background.

*What Kinds of Input are Most Valuable?*

We invite two types of input. First, we welcome general suggestions about
the topics or concepts that ought to be measured in the survey, especially
if you believe they might otherwise be overlooked. We will consider these
broad ideas carefully and could develop instrumentation to measure them.
Second, we particularly welcome suggestions of specific survey questions
(or revisions of older questions)—complete with full question wording and
response options—whether you wrote the items or came across them elsewhere.

For both types of input, please describe briefly the rationale for
inclusion of these topics or questions—in particular how their addition to
ANES surveys may improve the ability of researchers to explain voting
behavior and public opinion in the 2024 presidential election. Inspiration
for innovations may come from theoretical advances or debates in the
scholarly literature, methodological insights in survey measurement, or new
developments in American politics. In addition, when recommending specific
questions, please summarize any available evidence about the explanatory
power and measurement qualities (e.g., validity, reliability, etc.) of the
items. A brief list of variables needed to demonstrate the validity and
reliability of the new content would be useful as well. Concise tables and
brief textual summaries of testing procedures are welcome. Note that
adopting long batteries of questions will almost certainly be infeasible,
due to space constraints.

Keep in mind that the goal is to improve the overall content and design of
ANES surveys. The ANES is a public good, intended to advance the study of
voting behavior and public opinion as a field and thus to be broadly useful
to researchers, students, and analysts of American politics. For that
reason, we do not seek proposals whose primary purpose is to advance the
research agenda of specific individuals or teams by placing measures from
their projects “on the ANES.” To the extent we adopt measures from specific
projects, it will be because we judge that inclusion of those items
benefits the survey and its users broadly. Justifying new instrumentation
by briefly discussing a range of applications and hypothesis tests that it
would make possible would strengthen any suggestion. With these caveats in
mind, we will also consider experimental interventions for the ANES 2023
Pilot Study. This is most useful where one has reason to expect that how or
when a question is asked may substantially affect its quality and value. In
such cases, assigning respondents randomly to distinct variants of the
question wording, response options, or question order may be useful.
Experiments will be included primarily to assess measurement implications
and improve quality, not to test substantive hypotheses.

*Format and Deadline*

Please submit your ideas in a Microsoft Word document, if possible.
Suggestions of any level of detail are welcome, but please limit your
submission, including supporting evidence (where relevant), to no more than
five pages (11- or 12-point font, 1.5 or double spacing, one-inch margins).
We will not have time to read longer documents. For full
consideration, ideas should be submitted to ANES by 5:00 pm Eastern Time on
Friday, September 15, 2023. Earlier submissions are encouraged. To submit
your ideas, please email your file to the following address:
[log in to unmask]

*What to Expect*

We will be finalizing the pilot questionnaire in September and October. As
always, the ANES will make the final questionnaire public, likely by
December 2023. As this is not a competition, we will not be designating
winners or losers, nor issuing acceptances or rejections. We regard all
input as valuable regardless of the final decisions about what we have
space to include on the pilot questionnaire. We regret that we will not
have time to provide feedback on, or reactions to, specific suggestions.
However, we may follow up in some cases if we have further questions about
the ideas or evidence sent to us.

*More about the Pilot Study*

The pilot survey is currently expected to be in the field in December 2023.
A national sample will be drawn from all fifty states and the District of
Columbia. Interviews will be self-completed on the web and run at least 20
minutes in duration (on average). The target sample size has not been
finalized but will be greater than 1,000 respondents and unlikely to exceed
3,000; you should not assume sufficient cases to analyze data at the level
of individual states or congressional districts. Roughly one third of the
questionnaire will consist of standard ANES items (e.g., demographics,
political predispositions, voting behavior) that are needed to assess the
relevance and value of new items.

**************************************************************
               Political Methodology E-Mail List
   Editors:  Yuan (Cecilia) Sui and Gechun Lin
                  <[log in to unmask]>
**************************************************************
     Send messages to [log in to unmask]
  To join the list, cancel your subscription, or modify
                 your subscription settings visit:

  https://www.cambridge.org/core/membership/spm/mailing-list

**************************************************************