2022 Collaborative Midterm Survey

Collaborative Midterm Survey 2024 Data Innovation Award

Nominate Here

The Collaborative Midterm Survey is pleased to introduce the CMS Data Innovation Award. This award recognizes innovative uses of CMS data by students and early career professionals – within 6 years of highest degree. Recipients will receive $750.

We are excited to recognize innovative use of CMS data. This could include data used in a conference presentation, academic article, op-ed, dissertation/ thesis, or other use of the data. 

Innovation is broadly defined. Innovations can include: 

• A novel insight from the data
• An analysis of CMS data alongside other data
• A creative data visualization
• Using the data to inform policy, benefit the public, support a community partner, or entrepreneurial project 
• Enhance statistical or survey methods 

We expect to award up to 10 CMS Data Innovation Awards in 2024. We encourage self-nominations and nominations of others. Nominations can be submitted at any time and are reviewed on a rolling basis. Nominate Here

Frequently Asked Questions:

Where are the submission guidelines?
Submission guidelines are detailed on the application itself. You will be asked to provide the title of your project, where it was presented/published, a brief description of how it was used (250 words max), and a summary of key findings and/or innovations related to CMS data (300 words max). You will also be asked to upload your paper, presentation, or other related product on the application. We have no specific formatting guidelines for the product you will submit. Please feel free to follow the formatting guidelines of the journal, conference, news outlet, etc. that you intend to publicize your work in. 

Is there a deadline? 
There is no deadline. Submissions are continuously reviewed on a rolling basis. Once you feel that your submission is ready, feel free to submit at any time.

Can I collaborate with colleagues? 
Definitely! We fully welcome collaborative projects. Please make sure to detail all authors involved on the project on the application. 

Can I submit a working paper?
Yes. We welcome any type of submission that showcases CMS data in a public forum, such as conference presentations, academic articles, op-eds, dissertations/theses, and similar outlets of public dissemination.  This provides flexibility to submit a paper for the award before a formal publication. 

Where can I find more information about accessing the data? 
We have an informational webinar of the methodologies, results, and details about the 2022 CMS here. 
 

Thought Summit on The Future of Survey Science

Government, industry, and academia depend on surveys more than ever before. However, shifting social behaviors, technology, and public trust mean that the accuracy and reliability of surveys are in flux. This Thought Summit brings together experts in survey research with connections to large NSF-funded surveys, data science, and AI. Our goal is to identify strategies and infrastructure to support the most accurate and cost-effective surveys. To do this, the Thought Summit will focus on two overlapping areas.

 1.) Identifying ways government-funded surveys can collaborate to gain efficiencies and meet survey research goals.

2.) Identifying ways AI and data science can enhance these collaborations and inform strategies to solve contemporary challenges faced by survey research.

We are inviting up to five PhD students to attend the Thought Summit fully-funded. More information about the call and how to apply can be found here. The deadline to apply is May 31, 2024.

The Thought Summit will be held between September 22 and September 25, 2024. The summit is supported by the Cornell Center for Data Science for Enterprise and Society.

More details to come. 

Hackathon & Data Launch

Participants joined us in-person or virtually on January 20, 2023 at Cornell Tech in NYC as experts from industry, academia, and media offered their perspectives on the innovations, methods, and data from the 2022 Collaborative Midterm Survey. We called this a hackathon because all panelists received the survey data in advance and incorporated their analyses into the presentations and comments. All data and methods were made publicly available at the time of the event.

The Collaborative Midterm Survey partnered with The Graduate Roosevelt Island Hotel for conference attendees. 

Panelists 

SSRS

SSRS is a full-service survey and market research firm known for innovative methodologies and optimized research designs.

This team planned to poll 3,100 respondents using a probability-based sample and 3,300 respondents using a non-probability sample from their panel partners. Their sample size was chosen to ensure an adequate number of completes in CA, FL, and WI due to their electoral importance and to allow for statistical power for analyses.

The probability-based samples included their in-house TCPA compliant probability panel, supplemented by an Address-Based Sample (ABS) for WI. The non-probability sample came from one of their trusted panel partners, some of which are the largest and highest quality first-party non-probability panel providers in the world.

The full team includes: 

• Kristen Conrad, Vice President & Account Executive – Health Policy & Public Opinion Research
• Jordon Peugh, Chief Business Officer
• Chintan Turakhia, Executive Vice President – Strategic Initiatives and Innovations
• Cameron McPhee, SSRS Chief Methodologist

1. Help Understand the 2022 Midterm Election. From 1958 to 2002, the American National Election Study (ANES) conducted midterm surveys to provide insights into elections, voting behavior, and outcomes. While high quality election surveys can always offer important and unique insights into voter preferences and behaviors, media and campaign effects, and political representation and democratic accountability, understanding these factors in the context of midterm elections has never been more important.
2. Expand understanding of key segments of the electorate. Surveys are often too small and methodologically opaque to analyze variation within racial, geographic, partisan, and other important groups. The sample size of nearly 20,000 combined with methodological transparency and an emphasis on hard-to-reach populations will allow for analyzing state-level data as well as subgroups of the population. Further, we will partner with other election surveys to include some common questions and demographic variables, allowing the Collaborative Midterm Survey to be merged with these surveys, creating an unprecedented opportunity to understand the preferences, attitudes, and behaviors of groups that are impossible to analyze in traditional surveys.
3. Promote innovative, collaborative, and cost-effective survey strategies. Most survey projects make decisions about sample size, sample type, and survey provider early in the process based on budget constraints and on what strategies have proved effective in the past. To encourage innovation, we are flipping this model and soliciting proposals that encourage methodological diversity and innovation. The budget will be large enough to allow risks and innovative strategies. At the same time, the competitive proposal process encourages cost effective strategies. To ensure collaboration, up to three proposals will be selected to implement the Collaborative Midterm Survey. Proposals can come from any sector, including researchers, nonprofit organizations, survey organizations, tech firms, media organizations, or teams representing a combination of these or other areas.
4. Develop a transparent, data-driven, and inclusive framework that allows direct assessment of the advantages and tradeoffs of various survey methods. Declining survey response rates amidst rapidly shifting survey methods and changing social conditions mean it is increasingly difficult to identify the most accurate and cost-effective survey strategies. These challenges are especially important to solve for the many government surveys designed to understand economic and business conditions, health outcomes, crime victimization, and many other areas. The combination of three collaborators that each use multiple methodological strategies to conduct the same survey during the same time period along with rigorous methodological disclosure will allow the 2022 Collaborative Midterm Survey to offer unprecedented insight into the advantages and tradeoffs of various survey methods. Recognizing tradeoffs is important, because it may be that some methods are better for reaching harder-to-reach populations, while other methods yield more accurate national or state-level data. Thus, the 2022 Collaborative Midterm Survey does not imply that a single best approach exists. Rather, the collaborative and multi-method approach is designed to offer a comprehensive and inclusive framework for identifying tradeoffs of various sampling and methodological strategies. The 2022 Collaborative Midterm Survey will include numerous indicators that can be compared to known population benchmarks at the state and national level. We envision this framework being used in future surveys, offering an ongoing transparent, data-driven, and inclusive framework to continually monitor the most effective survey methods for various goals.
5. Rapid and public dissemination of results. All data and methodological documentation will be made publicly available through the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research and the project website. The data will be made available through an easy-to-use search interface and presented through intuitive data visualizations. Furthermore, a data launch and hackathon will take place on January 20. This event will be livestreamed to encourage broad attendance. Finally, methodological reports and recommendations written by the project team and others will be made accessible through the project website.