Assessing the risks to online polls from bogus respondents

More than 80% of the public polls used to track key indicators of U.S. public opinion, such as the president’s approval rating or support for Democratic presidential candidates, are conducted using online opt-in polling. Based on data gathered from over 60,000 interviews across six online sources, a new Pew Research Center study evaluates three prominent methods for recruiting online poll respondents (opt-in survey panels, a crowdsourcing website and address-recruited survey panels) looking for “bogus,” or untrustworthy, respondents. The study finds that no method of online polling is perfect, but there are notable differences across approaches with respect to the risks posed by bogus interviews.

• Access the survey dataset

Pew Research Center’s Election News Pathways project

In January, Pew Research Center launched its new Election News Pathways project, a yearlong initiative exploring how Americans’ news habits relate to what they learn and think about the 2020 U.S. presidential election. Powered by multiple surveys conducted on the Center’s American Trends Panel throughout the year, a core feature of this project is a digital, interactive tool that allows you to dig in and examine election-related survey questions by media trait or demographic group.

• Explore the data tool
• Guide to using the tool
• Create an account to pull data from our API
• Q&A: How Pew Research Center evaluated Americans’ trust in 30 news sources

The digital pulpit: A nationwide analysis of online sermons

Many surveys have asked Americans about their religious affiliations, beliefs and practices, but less is known about what churchgoing Americans hear each week during religious services. A December Pew Research Center analysis begins exploring this question by harnessing new computational techniques to identify, collect and analyze the sermons that U.S. churches livestream or share on their websites each week. To collect the data, the Center built new computational tools that identified every institution labeled as a church in the Google Places application programming interface (API), then collected and transcribed all the sermons publicly posted on a representative sample of their websites during an eight-week period. 

• Q&A: Why we studied American sermons and how we did it

Want to understand the 2020 census? Take our new email course

The U.S. census is a complicated, crucial task unlike any other, with many challenges that include growing public reluctance to answer surveys. In 2020, the Census Bureau will ask most people to respond online, which is a big change from the past. The resulting numbers will guide political decisions, federal funding and research for the next decade. To understand the past, present and future of the U.S. census, you can sign up for our new five-part email mini-course about the 2020 census. Think you are a census aficionado? Test your knowledge with our new quiz.

Democrats on Twitter more liberal, less focused on compromise than those not on the platform

For a recent analysis from our Data Labs team, researchers measured Democrats’ attitudes and candidate preferences, and also examined the Twitter profiles of a representative sample of U.S. adult Democrats who had volunteered their Twitter handles to measure their online activities and behaviors – specifically the share who follow various candidates and elected officials. This allowed researchers to compare the attitudes of Democrats on Twitter from those off of the platform.

Q&A: How and why we studied online dating in the U.S.

One of the long-standing themes of the Center’s work is studying how Americans find romantic partners and interact with loved ones. In an interview on our Fact Tank blog, Monica Anderson, associate director of internet and technology research, addresses how and why we studied online dating in the United States for our new report examining the virtues and downsides of dating sites and apps.

New on 'Decoded'

Pew Research Center’s Decoded blog focuses on the “how” behind our numbers. The blog features content ranging from survey methods, to data science, to data visualization, and allows researchers to build on and engage with our work. Explore some of our latest posts:

• How can researchers track changes in public opinion when there’s a shift in survey mode?
• Measuring community type in Europe, from big cities to country villages
• Evaluating what makes a U.S. community urban, suburban or rural

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