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Survey Methods

reportJul 1, 2024

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.

data essayFeb 12, 2024

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.

reportJul 8, 2024

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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Survey Methods

Publications

reportFeb 24, 2016

Data Quality Deserves an Honest Discussion

While the possibility of falsified data is an important consideration in survey research, a new tool to detect it fails to perform as advertised.
reportFeb 23, 2016

Evaluating a New Proposal for Detecting Data Falsification in Surveys

The claim by Kuriakose and Robbins (2015) that there is widespread falsification in international surveys is clearly concerning. However, an extensive investigation conducted by Pew Research Center finds the claim is not well supported.
reportJan 7, 2016

Can Likely Voter Models Be Improved?

High-profile polling failures in recent elections have drawn attention to the challenges in using surveys to predict outcomes. Our study examines various methods of determining who is a likely voter.
short readsJan 5, 2016

Pew Research Center will call 75% cellphones for surveys in 2016

We’re making this change to ensure our survey samples properly represent the now roughly half (47%) of U.S. adults who only have a cellphone.
reportNov 18, 2015

Advances in Telephone Survey Sampling

Telephone surveys face numerous challenges, but some positive developments have emerged, principally with respect to sampling.
reportNov 12, 2015

The Unique Challenges of Surveying U.S. Latinos

Surveying Hispanics is complicated for many reasons – language barriers, sampling issues and cultural differences – that are the subject of a growing field of inquiry.
short readsSep 22, 2015

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.
reportSep 22, 2015

Coverage Error in Internet Surveys

With 89% of U.S. adults online, survey research is rapidly moving to the Web. But 89% is not 100%, and surveys that include only those who use the internet run the risk of producing biased results.
short readsAug 19, 2015

How do Americans use Twitter for news?

A look at how researchers analyzed news habits on Twitter using a small but representative sample of users drawn from a national survey of U.S. adults.
short readsJul 21, 2015

The challenges of polling when fewer people are available to be polled

With response rates low and heading lower, how can survey researchers have confidence in their findings? Scott Keeter, director of survey research at Pew Research Center, addresses this issue and related questions.