How we measured Americans’ engagement in public life
This piece explains how researchers measured Americans’ engagement in public life using multimode surveys, address-based sampling and cluster analysis.
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 review code at Pew Research Center
As part of our quality control process, we review code with a series of interim reviews during a project and a formalized code check at the end.
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Nonresponse rates on open-ended survey questions vary by demographic group, other factors
Demographic characteristics and other factors, such as the devices that respondents use to take surveys, are tied to Americans’ willingness to engage with open-ended questions.
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Testing survey questions about a hypothetical military conflict between China and Taiwan
Given the complexities of geopolitics, how might wording affect responses to a question about a hypothetical conflict between China and Taiwan?
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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.
