In February 2021, the American Political Science Association made the inaugural award honoring the best poster presented at the APSA Annual Meeting. The purpose of the APSA Best Poster Award is to encourage research work by a graduate student or early career scholar and to broaden the recognition of this work within political science. The award includes a $500 cash prize.
Stephanie Chan, Tanika Raychaudhuri, and Ali Valenzuela of Princeton University were awarded for their 2020 poster, “Group Threat or Contact? The Effects of Local Immigration Primes on Policy Views.” The award committee members consisted of Paul MacDonald (Wellesley College), chair, Tobin Grant (Southern Illinois University), and Erica Owen Palmer (University of Pittsburgh). The committee issued the following citation:
The research presented in this poster addresses a substan-tively important topic and utilizes innovative methods to evaluate competing theories. The authors examine how the local immigrant community affects individuals' attitudes toward immigration policy (including pathways to citizenship). The authors evaluate two competing channels: a threat hypothesis where a larger local immigrant population leads to less support for pro-immigration policies, and a contact hypothesis where the same variable leads to support for pro-immigration policies. To test their hypotheses, the authors did a large survey experiment of 2,500 respondents. The treatment asks respondents to reflect on the size and change in the size of the immigrant population. They find support for the contact hypothesis: reminding people about the local immigrant community leads to increased support for pro-immigration policies. Text analysis of open-ended responses suggests support for the contact mechanism. In terms of presentation, the poster is very easy to read and understand. Figures are used well to display key findings.
MEET THE AWARD RECIPIENTS
Stephanie Chan is a PhD candidate at Princeton University with a focus on American politics, comparative politics, and formal and quantitative methods. Her dissertation, Creative Citizenship, uses survey analysis, interviews, and survey experiments to examine the role of race in immigrants’ political incorporation. She is a 2017–18 APSA Minority Fellow and is the recipient of multiple research grants and conference travel grants. Before coming to Princeton, Stephanie graduated summa cum laude from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst with a BA in political science, a letter of specialization in data analytics for politics and policy, and a certificate in international relations.
Tanika Raychaudhuri is a visiting research collaborator in the Department of Politics at Princeton University, where she obtained her PhD in 2019. She specializes in American politics, with a focus on political behavior, race, immigration, and inequality. Her current research investigates a range of topics, including public opinion on immigration, Asian American partisan acquisition, and media framings of the opioid epidemic. She will be joining the Department of Political Science at the University of Houston as an assistant professor in fall 2021.
Professor Ali Valenzuela’s research and teaching are in American politics, with a focus on race and racism; Latina/o/x attitudes, preferences and turnout; immigration and its political consequences; public opinion and voter behavior; ethno-racial and religious identities in politics; survey design and experimental methods. His research has been published in the American Political Science Review, Public Opinion Quarterly, Political Psychology, and in other peer-reviewed outlets. ■
