Understanding error bars in charts
Error bars illustrate the margin of error for a survey estimate by showing how precise that estimate is. Here are some answers to common questions that might help you better understand charts with error bars.
A behind-the-scenes blog about research methods at Pew Research Center.
For our latest findings, visit pewresearch.org.
Error bars illustrate the margin of error for a survey estimate by showing how precise that estimate is. Here are some answers to common questions that might help you better understand charts with error bars.
In this post, we delve into Kubernetes – the back-end tool that powers the systems our research team interacts with.
Our approach to alt text – and overall website accessibility – has evolved in recent years.
In our surveys, people are much less likely to skip questions online than when speaking to interviewers in person or on the phone; we explore how offering a “Don’t know” option in online surveys affects results.
We explore the connection between Americans’ survey responses and their digital activity using data from our past Twitter research.
In this piece, we demonstrate how to conduct age-period-cohort analysis, a statistical tool, to determine the effects of generation.
To test whether machine transcription would be practical for studies of sermons in 2019 and 2020, we compared human and machine transcriptions of snippets from a random sample of 200 audio and video sermons.
In 2022, we experimented with a new question in cross-national surveys to capture the international equivalent of U.S. partisan “leaners.”
As part of our quality control process, we review code with a series of interim reviews during a project and a formalized code check at the end.
Demographic characteristics and other factors, such as the devices that respondents use to take surveys, are tied to Americans’ willingness to engage with open-ended questions.
Given the complexities of geopolitics, how might wording affect responses to a question about a hypothetical conflict between China and Taiwan?
To search or browse all of Pew Research Center findings and data by topic, visit pewresearch.org