Support for Conferences and Mentoring Activities in Political Methodology

该提案寻求以下方面的支持：1)少数族裔、女性、助理教授和研究生参加未来三届年度政治方法论夏季会议；2)部分支持三次较小的专门方法会议，会议的主题由竞争性提案过程确定；3)妇女网络和指导活动，包括与其他专业年度会议和两个妇女政治方法论小型会议联合举办的聚会。第1部分扩展了自1986年以来NSF的共同赞助。第二部分和第三部分是针对我们为未来夏季会议采用的更大、更具包容性的形式以及采取积极措施在实地招聘和留住妇女的必要性而采取的新举措。在过去的几年里，夏季方法会议非常成功，以至于许多感兴趣的教师和研究生不得不被拒之门外。为了扩大会议和分领域并使其多样化，政治方法科投票决定大幅度扩大会议。这里申请的资金将专门用于资助研究生、女性、少数民族和其他没有资金的助理教授参加这些新的、更大的会议。知识价值：一年一度的政治方法论夏季会议提供了一个论坛，在这里可以展示、讨论和推进最先进的政治方法论。它们为研究生和初级教员提供了一个会见其他机构同事的场所；接受最先进的培训，对具体研究问题的建议和指导；并受到启发，为该领域的进一步发展做出贡献。拟议的关于具体方法学主题的小型会议和妇女政治方法学会议将为科学进步和专业指导提供机会，使人想起25年前最初的年度会议。这些是对年度政治方法会议的规模日益扩大和需要采取积极措施以改善妇女在外地的代表性的关切作出的反应。更广泛的影响：定量政治分析，表现在诸如民意调查、选举预测、前瞻性和回顾性政策评估以及冲突预测等活动中，已成为工业化民主国家运作的核心活动。信息技术的快速发展，如通过万维网快速、低成本地获取信息，以及用计算密集型方法处理这些信息的能力，在短时间内彻底改变了我们系统地分析政治行为的能力。政治方法论领域在理解和指导政治方面具有核心作用。通过这项提议，我们还旨在增加女性（教师和研究生）对科学活动的参与。我们提议资助的妇女指导活动旨在创造网络和机会，并为妇女在政治方法论领域的“漏管道”堵塞，在这个领域，妇女在该领域的代表性不足，约为两倍。这些新举措落实了美国国家科学院最近的报告、APSA关于提高妇女在学术政治学中的地位的研讨会以及我们内部的格拉纳托长期战略规划报告的建议。

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.