Social sciences research poster examples

What a social science poster has to carry

The disciplines here rarely have a clean trial flow to draw, so the work of the board falls on the abstract, the method and the figure. A sociology or criminology poster usually reports a survey or an administrative dataset, so it needs the sample, the response rate and the limits stated plainly. An archaeology or anthropology poster reports fieldwork, so the site, the season and the recording method matter more than a p value. A legal or political science poster reports an analysis of documents or cases, where the corpus and the coding scheme are the method. Every board here states its numbers and reconciles them across the abstract, the flow, the statistics and the figure.

Layout is a reading order, not decoration

Each of these boards puts the finding where the eye lands first, then the question, then how it was answered, then what it means. The blocks that appear on a board are fixed by the template, so the study was written to the blocks rather than the other way round: a board with a participant flow gets a study that has one, and a board without a statistics strip carries its headline number inside a section instead. Where a template's heading did not fit the study, the page says so rather than pretending the heading reads correctly.

Before you print one

Every study, institution and author on these boards is invented, so the structure is the thing to copy rather than the content. Body text on an A0 board wants to be readable at a metre, which in practice means keeping sections short enough that the type does not shrink to fit. Check the conference specification before committing to an orientation, because many programmes fix the board size and a portrait poster on a landscape board wastes half the space. Each page links the conference or society specification it was written against.

Every page in this collection

• Anthropology research poster example

  Fourteen months of participant observation at a weekly produce market, laid out as an A0 portrait board in a journal style two column grid. The board treats ethnography the way a journal does: abstract, site, method, findings and discussion, with the counts a reader can check.

• Archaeology research poster example

  Nine shell middens dated along four kilometres of coastal dune, laid out on an A0 portrait board with a numbered rail running down the left. The rail turns the board into a reading order, so a visitor who starts at node one finishes at the conclusion without being told where to go.

• Criminology research poster example

  A matched cohort study of youth diversion and twelve month reoffending, laid out as a classic A0 portrait research board. Three key numbers sit across the top of the results, and every one of them can be traced back to a count in the flow below.

• Demography research poster example

  Median age change across forty regional local government areas, laid out as an A0 landscape board with a ribbon of four numbers running across the middle. The ribbon holds the result and the columns above and below explain why one number hides two different mechanisms.

• Economics research poster example

  A difference in differences study of a state minimum wage rise, laid out as an A0 portrait board built around its results table. At a metre you read the estimate, the table under it and the interval, and only then the method that produced them.

• Human geography research poster example

  A two wave household panel measuring what a rail extension did to the commute, laid out as an A0 landscape board with one wide hero figure. The figure plots commute time against distance from the nearest station, so the saving and the point where it disappears are both visible at once.

• Legal research poster example

  Sentence length for one offence category across five courts, laid out as an A0 landscape board with the table given the widest block on the design. Empirical legal work is read through its table, so the table is placed where the eye lands first.

• Linguistics research poster example

  A vowel merger measured across 120 speakers in one coastal city, laid out as an A0 portrait board where a single hero figure takes the top half. The figure plots formant difference by birth decade, so the change reads as a trend rather than as two bars.

• Media studies research poster example

  Four thousand news headlines coded ten years apart, laid out as an A0 landscape board built around a two column comparison table. The table is the argument: every measure is shown for both years with the change spelled out beside it.

• Political science research poster example

  A randomised trial of one administrative text message and early voting turnout, laid out as an A0 portrait board with a strip of four numbers across the top. The strip carries the whole result, and the columns under it explain how it was obtained.

• Social work research poster example

  Twelve months of routine time records from 84 caseworkers in six offices, laid out as an A0 portrait board with three icon topped key points across the top. The board answers one question a manager can act on: what a caseload of thirty costs in client contact.

• Sociology research poster example

  Forty eight interviews with renters about why they stop reporting repairs, laid out as an A0 portrait board that leads with the question rather than the finding. The headline is the question a passer by can answer in their head, and the four reasons sit underneath in the renters own words.