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Survey researchers typically assess attitudes, broadly defined here as associations between concepts and evaluations, using self-report measures. For example, respondents might be asked to explicitly self-assess their views or feelings toward different immigrant groups on a response scale from 1 (dislike this group very much) to 7 (like this group very much). Alternative to such a direct measurement approach, respondents’ attitudes might also be assessed indirectly using implicit measures. Here, one line of research originating in psychology uses respondents’ performance (e.g. response latencies or categorization errors) on behavioral tasks designed to infer the construct of interest rather to rely on self-reports. Recent years have witnessed an unprecedented proliferation of methods seeking to assess such implicit attitudes, including but not limited to measurement approaches like the implicit association test (Nosek, 2007) or the affective misattribution procedure (Payne et al., 2005). Relying on relatively small, non-representative samples, such methods are routinely employed in psychological research. However, the feasibility and utility of using implicit measures in large-scale survey research based on representative population samples is less clear. This session invites papers that focus on methodological as well as substantive issues arising from coupling measures of implicit attitudes with large-scale population surveys. Contributions may cover but are not limited to the following research topics:

• Innovative measurement approaches of implicit attitudes
• Effects of survey mode and/or sampling methodology on outcomes
• Applications with a substantial focus (e.g. research on intergroup relations or sensitive topics more generally)

Please send your paper proposals (no more than 500 words in length) to:
Prof. Dr. Elmar Schlüter, elmar.schlueter@sowi.uni-giessen.de
Prof. Dr. Jochen Mayerl, jochen.mayerl@sowi.uni-kl.de