Confronting 2016 and 2020 Polling Limitations
Looking at final estimates of the outcome of the 2020 U.S. presidential race, 93% of national polls overstated the Democratic candidate’s support among voters, while nearly as many (88%) did so in 2016.
What 2020’s Election Poll Errors Tell Us About the Accuracy of Issue Polling
Given the errors in 2016 and 2020 election polling, how much should we trust polls that attempt to measure opinions on issues?
Measuring Religion in Pew Research Center’s American Trends Panel
Since the establishment of the ATP, the Center has gradually migrated away from telephone polling and toward online survey administration, and since early 2019, the Center has conducted most of its U.S. polling on the ATP. This shift has major implications for the way the Center measures trends in American religion – including those from the Center’s flagship Religious Landscape Studies, which were conducted by phone in 2007 and 2014.
Polling methods are changing, but reporting the views of Asian Americans remains a challenge
The rise of internet polling makes it more feasible to publish estimates for Asian Americans. But these estimates offer a limited view.
Q&A: Why and how we expanded our American Trends Panel to play a bigger role in our U.S. surveys
Nick Bertoni, manager of the American Trends Panel, explains how the panel works and what its recent expansion means for our future survey work.
Growing and Improving Pew Research Center’s American Trends Panel
Pew Research Center’s American Trends Panel (ATP) is now the Center’s principal source of data for U.S. public opinion research.
What our transition to online polling means for decades of phone survey trends
What does the migration to online polling mean for the country's trove of public opinion data gathered over the past four decades?
Who’s left out in a Web-only survey and how it affects results
We surveyed non-Web panel members by mail and assessed how much, if at all, their non-participation would affect the outcome in a poll conducted exclusively online.
From Telephone to the Web: The Challenge of Mode of Interview Effects in Public Opinion Polls
Among the most striking trends in the field of survey research in the past two decades is the shift from interviewer-administered to self-administered surveys. Fueled by the growth of the internet, self-administration as a survey mode presents a mixture of opportunities and challenges to the field.
Building Pew Research Center’s American Trends Panel
In early 2014, Pew Research Center set out to build a probability-based panel – the American Trends Panel – to supplement our traditional method of data collection in the U.S. – the random digit dial (RDD) telephone survey. Here's how we built and managed the panel, and what we learned from it in 2014.
