This proposal seeks support for 1) minorities, women, assistant professors, and graduate students to attend the next three annual political methodology summer meetings; 2) partial support for three smaller specialized methodology meetings with topics determined by a competitive proposal process; and 3) women''s networking and mentoring activities, including gatherings in conjunction with other professional annual meetings and two small conferences for women in political methodology. Part 1 extends the NSF co-sponsorship in place since 1986. Parts 2 and 3 are new initiatives taken in response to the larger, more inclusive format we have adopted for future summer meetings and the need to take pro-active measures to recruit and retain women in the field.
For the past several years, the summer methods meetings have been so successful that many interested faculty and graduate students have had to be turned away. In an effort to broaden and diversify the meetings-and the subfield-the Political Methodology Section has voted to expand the meetings substantially. The funding requested here will be used exclusively to subsidize the participation of graduate students, women, minorities, and otherwise unfunded assistant professors in these new, larger meetings.
Intellectual merit: The annual political methodology summer meetings provide a forum where state of the art political methodology can be presented, discussed, and advanced. They provide a venue in which graduate students and junior faculty can meet colleagues from other institutions; receive state of the art training, advice on specific research problems, and mentoring; and be inspired to contribute to the further development of the field.
The proposed smaller conferences on specific methodological topics and the women''s political methodology conferences will provide opportunities for scientific advancement and professional mentoring on an intimate scale reminiscent of the original annual meetings of 25 years ago. These are a response to concerns about the increasing size of the annual political methodology meeting and the need for proactive measures to improve the representation of women in the field.
Broader impacts: Quantitative political analysis, expressed in such activities as opinion polling, election forecasting, prospective and retrospective policy assessment, and conflict forecasting, has become a core activity in the functioning of industrialized democracies. Rapid advances in information technology such the rapid, low-cost acquisition of information through the World Wide Web, and the ability to process that information with computationally-intensive methods, has in a short period of time revolutionized our ability to systematically analyze political behavior. The field of political methodology has a central role in understanding and guiding politics.
With this proposal, we also aim to increase the involvement of women (faculty and graduate students) in scientific activities. The women''s mentoring activities we are proposing to fund are intended to create networks and opportunities, as well as to plug the ""leaky pipeline"" for women in the field of political methodology where women are under-represented in the field by about a factor of two. These new initiatives implement recommendations from the recent National Academy of Sciences reports, the APSA Workshop on the Advancement of Women in Academic Political Science, and our internal Granato Long Range Strategic Planning Report.
