How do people in the U.S. take Pew Research Center surveys, anyway?
Here, we address some of the most common questions we receive about the nuts and bolts of taking a U.S.-focused Pew Research Center poll.
Methods
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Online opt-in polls can produce misleading results, especially for young people and Hispanic adults
We examine how an opt-in poll may have unintentionally misled the public about the sensitive issue of Holocaust denial among young Americans.
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Who Are You? The Art and Science of Measuring Identity
As a shop that studies human behavior through surveys and other social scientific techniques, we have a good line of sight into the contradictory nature of human preferences. Here’s a look at how we categorize our survey participants in ways that enhance our understanding of how people think and behave.
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Q&A: How we used large language models to identify guests on popular podcasts
We asked researchers how they used the newest generation of large language models to analyze roughly 24,000 podcast episodes.
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Comparing Two Types of Online Survey Samples
Pew Research Center conducted a study to compare the accuracy of six online surveys of U.S. adults – three from probability-based panels and three from opt-in sources. On average, the absolute error on opt-in samples was about twice that of probability-based panels.
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When surveying small populations, some approaches are more inclusive than others
Modern survey tools offer several ways to survey small populations, and in this explainer, we discuss the strengths and weaknesses of prominent approaches.
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How Public Polling Has Changed in the 21st Century
A new study found that 61% of national pollsters used different methods in 2022 than in 2016. And last year, 17% of pollsters used multiple methods to sample or interview people – up from 2% in 2016.
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Does public opinion polling about issues still work?
National polls like the Center’s come within a few percentage points, on average, of benchmarks from high response rate federal surveys.
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How to access Pew Research Center survey data
Pew Research Center makes most of its datasets available for download once reporting has been completed for a given study. Here’s how to find and access our data.
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Want to better understand how surveys work? We’ve got an email course for you
If you’ve wondered what opinion polls are for, how they are done or how to tell a good one from a bad one, sign up for our email mini-course.
