The Polarization Research Lab is very happy to announce that we have opened our first RFP for survey time. Similar in spirit to TESS, we are looking for innovative work on polarization, democratic/social norms, and political violence (all broadly defined). Proposals will be evaluated solely on scientific merit and will be awarded based on available survey space. Proposals will be blindly evaluated. Selected proposals will be fielded on YouGov as part of our weekly tracking survey. Proposals may be experimental or not. For expediency, we will only offer feedback to proposals selected for fielding.
Applications for our next RFP are due July 1, 2023.
Submissions are open to faculty, postdocs and phd students and are not limited to US scholars. All proposals get access to our core survey items and panel demographic variables.
Submissions are intended to be very short
Submitting a Proposal
To submit a proposal, complete the following steps:
- Write a summary of your proposal (1 page): This should identify the importance and contribution of your study (i.e., how the study will make a valuable contribution to science). Proposals need not be based on theory and can be purely descriptive.
- Write a summary of your study design (as long as needed): Your design document must detail any randomizations, treatments and collected measures. Your survey may only contain up to 10 survey items.
- Write a just justification for your sample size: (e.g., power analysis or simulation-based justification).
- Build your survey questions and analysis through the Online Survey Builder: Go to this link and build the content of your survey. When finished, be sure to download and save the Survey Content and Analysis script provided.
- Submit your proposal via ManuscriptManager. In order for your proposal to be considered, you must submit the following in your application:
- Proposal Summary (1 page)
- Design Summary
- Sample justification
- IRB Approval / Certificate
- A link to a PAP (Pre-analysis plan) specifying the exact analytical tests you will perform. Either aspredicted or osf are acceptable.
- Rmarkdown script with analysis code (you can find an example at this link or after completing the Online Survey Builder)
- Questionnaire document generated by the Online Survey Builder
An example application can be found at this link.
Limitations
- Incomplete or noncompliant proposals will not be reviewed
- All submitted materials must be anonymized.
- You cannot select when the study will be fielded
- All proposals will be fielded on a representative sample, with no special subsampling.
- One application per cycle (including co-authorship)
- Each proposal can only be submitted once; you may not make changes to your proposal content after submission
- You can include up to 10 units of content using the TESS framework (https://tessexperiments.org/html/limits.html), unless compelling scientific justification is provided.
- No video or audio treatments are allowed
- There is a maximum possible sample of 2,000, though 1,000 is the typical sample size for awards (unless compelling justification is provided in the application).
- Interventions to reduce polarization or improve support for democratic norms are prioritized
- Focused on US sample at the moment
- Deception will require a debrief, which counts as an item.
Data and transparency
If selected, your proposal will be made public on our website after fielding has completed. Data will be provided to the authors and reserved for their exclusive use for twelve months, after which the data and the submitted R script will be made public with an attribution license. This means that anyone can use the data with citation to the authors of the proposal.
We do not expect authorship for any collected data, but do ask for a citation to our lab in any manuscripts. Please cite as follows:
Shanto Iyengar, Yphtach Lelkes and Sean Westwood. (2023). America’s Political Pulse. https://polarizationresearchlab.org/americas-political-pulse/.
Resources
The following items may be of use when building your proposal:
- America’s Pulse Survey IRB Approval (via Dartmouth College)
- Consent Form used in the survey
- Debrief Form used in the survey
Proposals selected for fielding from our May 2023 RFP
- “Immigration is Difficult?! The Effect of Informing Voters about U.S. Immigration Policy” – Alexander Kustov and Michelangelo Landgrave
- “Is socially responsible capitalism truly polarizing?” – Daniel Stone and Jeffrey Lees
- “Misperceptions about Partisan Factional Composition and Affective Polarization” – Samuel Frederick
- “Unacceptable or “Part of the Job?” Measuring Public (In)Tolerance for Threats Against Politicians” – Tabitha Koch, Maranda Joyce, and Kishan Bhakta
Proposals selected for fielding from our February 2023 RFP
- “Can correcting misperception reduce intergroup hostility between Democrats and Republicans in the US?” – Rongbo Jin and Samara Klar
- “The Gendered Effect of Political Violence on Support for Freedom of Speech” – Nina Obermeier
- “Correcting Pluralistic Ignorance about Democratic Norms” – Brett Bessen and Jennifer Cole
- “That’s not my truth! Epistemic relativism as a root factor of political polarisation” – Diego Avendaño, Angelo Fasce, Dawn Holford, and Fabio Carrella
- “Partisan Cues and Updating Support for Democratic Norm Violation” – Omer Faruk Metin and George Georgarakis
- “Moralization, character judgments, and polarization” – Gino Marttelo Carmona Díaz and William Jiménez Leal
- “Does In-Party Conformity Undermine Democratic Norms?” – Kristian Vrede Skaaning Frederiksen, Lea Pradella, and Laurits Florang Aarslew
- “Factional Affect and Identity in American Politics” – Samuel Frederick
- “Specifying the Relationship Between Threat Sensitivity and Political Sentiments” – Vincenzo J Olivett and David S March
Proposals selected for fielding from our October 2022 RFP
- “Survey time proposal: Antecedents of racial group status threat and consequences for democratic norms” – Xanni Brown and Jennifer Richeson
- “Misinformed? Measuring Certainty in Political Misperceptions” – Brian Guay
- “Illiberal and Anti-Democratic Attitudes in Primary Electorates” – Zachary Albert
- “Will Republican Cultivation of a Right-Wing Populist Image Consolidate Anti-Democratic Americans within the Republican Party?” – Ariel Malka & Thomas Costello
- “Vicarious Elite Contact: Reducing Affective Polarization in the U.S.” – Jair Moreira, Aleena Khan, & James Steur
- “Political Differences in Belief Persistence” – Kerem Oktar & Tania Lombrozo
- “Bottom-up inoculation against spreading affectively polarized content” – Almog Simchon & Stephan Lewandowsky
- “The effect of sports language versus war language on perceptions of political extremism” – Alexander Tolkin
- “The Relationship Between Racial Attitudes and Affective Polarization” – Raquel Centeno
- “Investigating the Potential of Non-Partisan Elections to Lower Affective Polarization and Distrust in Electoral Integrity” – Jennifer Gaudette & Zayne Sember
- “Partisan Cue and Basic Human Values” – Minyoung Kim & Paul Goren
- “Group Construal Intervention Experiment” – Donald Snyder
- “Does Political Incivility Polarize?” – Bryan Gervais
- “Partisan Push and Pull: From Asymmetrical Elite Polarization to Public Opinion Polarization” – Youran Abby Qin, Yiming Wang, Linqi Lu, Jisoo Kim, & Michael W. Wagner
- “The Geography of Political Efficacy and Trust in the United States” – Daniel Hopkins & William Halm
Data are posted 12 months after a survey has been fielded. Data will be first posted in October 2023
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