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.
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Evaluating what makes a U.S. community urban, suburban or rural
A look at how objective measures of community type compare with the way Americans describe their own areas.
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When the unexpected happens, what’s a survey researcher to do?
From weather events to snap elections, outside developments can sometimes disrupt surveys while they are in the field.
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5 tips for writing about polls
There are some simple guidelines writers can follow to minimize the risk of readers misunderstanding or misinterpreting survey findings.
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How we check numbers and facts at Pew Research Center
All of the material we release goes through a rigorous verification process we call a “number check.”
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Exploring the link between European political parties’ ideology and their popularity on Twitter
It can be hard to determine whether parties near the ends of the ideology scale are more popular on the platform than moderate parties.
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Interpreting and validating topic models
Understanding the exact meaning of a set of words requires an intimate understanding of how the words are used in your data and the meaning they’re likely intended to convey in context.
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How public and private Twitter users in the U.S. compare — and why it might matter for your research
Overall, our survey found that 13% of U.S. adult Twitter users keep their feeds private.
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Lessons learned from more than 20 years of asking about Americans’ online habits
We’ve been asking Americans about their online news habits since the mid-1990s. Since then, the ways people get news online have changed a lot — and so have the ways we ask about it.
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Using tidyverse tools with Pew Research Center survey data in R
I wrote an introductory blog post about how to access and analyze Pew Research Center survey data with R, a free, open-source software for statistical analysis. The post showed how to perform tasks using the survey package.
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Working with geography in survey data
Survey researchers frequently explore differences in public opinion by demographic group — how men’s views compare with those of women, for example, or how younger people compare with older people. Often, it’s also possible to look at differences by survey respondents’ geographic location. Yet, when geographic information is available in survey data, it’s not always […]
