Public Opinion Polling Basics
By the end of our free, five-lesson course, you will know why we have polls, what the different kinds of polls are, how polling works and what you should look for in a poll.
Survey Methods
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.
How Pew Research Center Uses Its National Public Opinion Reference Survey (NPORS)
In 2020, Pew Research Center launched a new project called the National Public Opinion Reference Survey (NPORS). NPORS is an annual, cross-sectional survey of U.S. adults. Respondents can answer either by paper or online, and they are selected using address-based sampling from the United States Postal Service’s computerized delivery sequence file.
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How do you write survey questions that accurately measure public opinion?
In the second video from our Methods 101 series, we’re tackling why question wording is so important in public opinion surveys.
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Video Explainer: Understanding survey question wording
The second video in Pew Research Center’s “Methods 101” series helps explain question wording – a concept at the center of sound public opinion survey research – and why it’s important.
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Commercial Voter Files and the Study of U.S. Politics
A new analysis demystifies voter files, the widely-used and comprehensive digital databases used to better understand the U.S. electorate.
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Q&A: The growing use of ‘voter files’ in studying the U.S. electorate
Read a Q&A with Pew Research Center’s Ruth Igielnik and Scott Keeter about a recent study about voter files.
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Use of election forecasts in campaign coverage can confuse voters and may lower turnout
Probability forecasts have gained prominence in recent years. But these forecasts may confuse potential voters and may even lower the likelihood that they vote.
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Public Opinion Research in Sub-Saharan Africa
Pew Research Center hosted a survey methodology workshop on the opportunities and challenges of conducting public opinion research in sub-Saharan Africa to identify and discuss best practices and future directions for the field.
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First-time internet users: Who they are and what they do when they get online
Having access to the internet did not lead to more online exploration for some new internet users, and some had difficulties with the tablets.
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Many poll respondents guess wrong on their interviewer’s race or ethnicity
Establishing the interviewer’s perceived race or ethnicity is essential to understanding how it might affect the respondent’s answers to survey questions.
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How Pew Research Center surveyed 1,000 U.S. Muslims
In a short video, Pew Research Center researchers explain how they produced the Center’s wide-ranging new survey of 1,001 American Muslims.
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