Record Breaking SRA 2010 Biennial Meeting by Marcela Raffaelli and Stephen T. Russell

The SRA 2010 Biennial Meeting in Philadelphia was a great success! Despite the poor economy we broke standing records for submissions, registrations, and attendance at this year’s conference. Due to the slightly larger size of the venue, acceptances were up for all submission formats (78.8%, vs. 76.8% in 2008).

(left to right) Bonnie Leadbeater, Laurence Steinberg, Reed Larson

(left to right) Patrick Tolan, Moin Syed, Reed Larson

Perhaps most importantly, we had a lot of positive feedback about the quality of the program. We are extremely grateful to the participants in the invited program – keynote speakers, organizers of invited symposia, and workshop organizers and presenters. As well, we owe many thanks to SRA Past-President Reed Larson and other conference planning committee members; past co-Chairs Karen Rudolph and John Schulenberg; and Emerging Scholars representatives Laura Wray-Lake and Samantha Dockray. The review panel chairs (and their dedicated panel members) did a tremendous job reviewing a record number of submissions. And as always, the SRA Program Office staff played a critical role at all stages of the process and – with their meticulous attention to detail – are in large part responsible for the success of the conference.

Niobe Way (SRA President) and Reed Larson (SRA Past President)

We tried several new things this year. First, the new student-mentor review process went well, and there are plans to continue that opportunity for 2012. Second, the online “Symposium Assistant” was used by only a small number of people but was a big hit with users. Nearly all said that it was easy to use and that we should continue to offer it in future years. Current plans are to use it again for the 2012 meeting, so we encourage people to plan ahead and take advantage of it. Third, this year we expanded representation of federal funders, and multiple government agencies agreed to take part: the National Science Foundation, U.S. Department of Education, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, U.S. Department of Justice, and four NIH institutes (NIAAA, NICHD, NIDA, NIMH).

2010 SRA Young Scholars Program participants

Finally, we made two innovations to the tradition of preconference statistical methods workshops. We broadened the scope to include a preconference session on policy issues and another on qualitative research methods. We also held a postconference statistical methods workshop during the last 2 sessions of the conference program, on Saturday afternoon. Many thanks to the pre- and post-conference workshop leaders who generously volunteered their time and expertise to the SRA membership.

It is with a mingled sense of relief and sadness that we turn things over to Lene Arnett Jensen and Xinyin Chen, who will co-chair the program for 2012. They welcome your ideas for the gathering in Vancouver!

Dr. Marcela Raffaelli, University of Illinois
Dr. Stephen T. Russell, The University of Arizona
2010 SRA Program Co-Chairs