Yet another conference: The annual meeting of the communication research methods group in lovely Austria. The presentations were certainly better on average than at WAPOR. Our talk on online sorting studies was well-received, and there seems to be some interest in our super-secret sorting tool.

I especially enjoyed the talks on non-response in surveys (”The main difficulty in non-reponse research is non-response.”) and using SmartPLS for formative measurement models.

This year’s WAPOR conference was nice, although the papers presented varied (too) much in quality for my taste. The presentations by the commercial pollsters seem to be all about sample sizes, post-stratification weights and how to poll in Afghanistan, China or the world at large.

A quick review of the proceedings revealed that only about 8 papers used at least somewhat advanced methods of analysis like multilevel or structural equation models, latent class or time series analysis. There were some large-scale content analyses and cross-national comparisons done, but not many theoretical or conceptual advancements. Maybe WAPOR is not the place for cutting edge research, but then again what is?

Our own paper presentation went pretty smooth, we had nice co-panelists and I got to meet the head of Eurobarometer after complaining about their media use scales, oh well.

Bibdesk is the best Bibtex-based reference manager I’ve come across. Not only does it have an incredibly slick UI and great integration with OS X, it also automagically files collected papers in PDF files.

This iTunes-style library is very useful if, like me, you have scattered articles all over your harddrive. By referencing local files, they are automatically copied and renamed into a library directory of your choice. You can even file them into subfolders but I prefer plain citekey.pdf.

Importing from JSTOR and the likes is a matter of copying the citation information in any common format, plus an additional AppleScript that grabs the PDF right from JSTOR. I had to fix the script to use a proxy for JSTOR access, but now everything is a matter of one or two clicks (probably optimizable to one click only). Since Pubmed offers only little to social scientists, I will look for other sources for references and articles. SpringerLink and Blackwell, you’re next!

As of this week I am officially working at the Berlin University of the Arts, more precisely as a Research Associate and Lecturer at the Chair of Communication and Media Research.

Not only does this mean that I get to do lots of interesting research and teaching and web programming  in a highly motivated young team, I also have the opportunity (and obligation) to write a PhD thesis, preferably on some online communication topic.

After 14 semesters I’m finally leaving Freie Universität Berlin with an MA in communication science. The last weeks have been insanely busy but equally rewarding.