How online discussion boards informed our study of what ‘news’ means to Americans
We share the “why” and “how” behind our use of an online discussion board as a qualitative research method.
A behind-the-scenes blog about research methods at Pew Research Center.
For our latest findings, visit pewresearch.org.
Latest from Decoded
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Interpreting and validating topic models
Understanding the exact meaning of a set of words requires an intimate understanding of how the words are used in your data and the meaning they’re likely intended to convey in context.
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How public and private Twitter users in the U.S. compare — and why it might matter for your research
Overall, our survey found that 13% of U.S. adult Twitter users keep their feeds private.
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Lessons learned from more than 20 years of asking about Americans’ online habits
We’ve been asking Americans about their online news habits since the mid-1990s. Since then, the ways people get news online have changed a lot — and so have the ways we ask about it.
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Using tidyverse tools with Pew Research Center survey data in R
I wrote an introductory blog post about how to access and analyze Pew Research Center survey data with R, a free, open-source software for statistical analysis. The post showed how to perform tasks using the survey package.
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What happens when a survey estimate doesn’t match a known benchmark
From time to time, data collected through surveys doesn’t match sources that are widely acknowledged as accurate.
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Overcoming the limitations of topic models with a semi-supervised approach
In this post, I’ll show how to overcome some of challenges that arise with topic modeling with what’s known as a “semi-supervised” approach.
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Crowdsourcing a video coding project can be as effective as using trained research assistants
Measuring the content and meaning of videos is an important research goal for social scientists, but the tools for analyzing them at scale lag behind new advances.
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On a scale from 1 to 10, how much do the numbers used in survey scales really matter?
Understanding how the numeric labels on scales might influence survey responses is an area of ongoing investigation for researchers.
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Avoiding technical debt in social science research
A lack of attention to detail in one research project can have compounding effects on future research projects.
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How social scientists can use transfer learning to kick-start a deep learning project
Social scientists are increasingly adopting machine learning methods to analyze large amounts of text, images and other kinds of data.
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To search or browse all of Pew Research Center findings and data by topic, visit pewresearch.org