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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Personal finance questions elicit slightly different answers in phone surveys than online
People polled by telephone are slightly less likely than those interviewed online to say their personal finances are in “poor shape.”
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Q&A: How and why Pew Research Center surveyed Americans on online harassment
Read a Q&A with Maeve Duggan, Pew Research Center research associate, on our survey examining online harassment in the United States.
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Few mode effects found when Americans are asked about their news consumption habits
A new analysis sheds light on concerns raised among pollsters that the medium by which a survey question is asked – its mode – can affect responses.
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Q&A: Pew Research Center’s president on key issues in U.S. polling
Read a Q&A with Michael Dimock, president of Pew Research Center, on recent developments in public opinion polling and what lies ahead.
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What Low Response Rates Mean for Telephone Surveys
Telephone polls still provide accurate data on a wide range of social, demographic and political variables, but some weaknesses persist.
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Methods 101: Random Sampling
The first video in Pew Research Center’s Methods 101 series helps explain random sampling – a concept that lies at the heart of all probability-based survey research – and why it’s important.
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How can a survey of 1,000 people tell you what the whole U.S. thinks?
The first video in our “Methods 101” series is about random sampling, a concept that undergirds all probability-based survey research. Here’s how it works.
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Q&A: Political polls and the 2016 election
Courtney Kennedy of Pew Research Center, who chaired survey researchers organization AAPOR’s task force on political polling in the 2016 U.S. elections, discuss the group’s findings and recommendations.
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Are Telephone Polls Understating Support for Trump?
An experiment comparing responses to 27 questions fielded on both a telephone and a web survey found no significant mode differences in overall opinion about Trump or many of his signature policy positions.
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A basic question when reading a poll: Does it include or exclude nonvoters?
Opinion polls in the U.S. can address the same topic yet reach very different results. There are several reasons this can happen, but we tackle one of the most basic: Did the poll include or exclude the 45% who didn’t vote in November?
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