Understanding error bars in charts
Error bars illustrate the margin of error for a survey estimate by showing how precise that estimate is. Here are some answers to common questions that might help you better understand charts with error bars.
A behind-the-scenes blog about research methods at Pew Research Center.
For our latest findings, visit pewresearch.org.
Latest from Decoded
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How we keep our online surveys from running too long
While there is no magic length that an online survey should be, Pew Research Center caps the length of its online American Trends Panel surveys at 15 minutes.
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What we learned from creating a custom graphics package in R using ggplot2
Building informative and digestible data visualizations is a foundational aspect of Pew Research Center’s work.
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Evaluating changes in how we ask Americans for their Twitter profiles
In our March 2021 survey, we decided to take a fresh look at the consent language we used when asking Americans to give us their Twitter handles.
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How we created a representative sample of adult Twitter users in the U.S.
Having a sample of adult Twitter users allows researchers to filter out bots, minors, institutional accounts and international users.
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How Pew Research Center uses git and GitHub for version control
Our data science work typically involves multiple researchers working collaboratively on code.
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Analyzing text for distinctive terms using pointwise mutual information
PMI is a quick and easy way to identify words that distinguish one group of documents from another.
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How we designed a scale to measure Americans’ knowledge of international affairs
Pew Research Center recently sought to measure what U.S. adults know about geography, foreign leaders, institutions and other issues.
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How we translate survey questions to be fielded around the world
A look at current best practices in survey questionnaire translation and how Pew Research Center applies these approaches.
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The pros and cons of using professional translators vs. Google Translate to analyze open-ended survey responses
Pew Research Center recently sought to translate more than 11,000 open-ended survey responses into English.
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How we built our data science infrastructure at Pew Research Center
After venturing into the world of computational social science in 2015, the Center needed to develop new tools and workflows.
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To search or browse all of Pew Research Center findings and data by topic, visit pewresearch.org