PLUS: How Pew Research Center is covering COVID-19
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June 4, 2020
** Methods
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A quarterly digest of the Center's latest methodological research and data science discoveries · Subscribe ↗ ([link removed])
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** What is machine learning, and how does it work? ([link removed])
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Broadly speaking, machine learning uses computer programs to identify patterns in data. In many ways, these techniques automate tasks that researchers have done by hand for years. For instance, we often ask people taking our surveys to tell us, in their own words, how they feel about a particular issue. A researcher then reads those responses, identifies key themes and organizes those themes for analysis. But what if we wanted to analyze several million social media posts? Or tens of thousands of lengthy congressional speeches? That level of scale and complexity is much more difficult for humans to process. In these types of situations, machine learning can be very useful. In the latest installment ([link removed]) of our Methods 101 video series, our Data Labs team explains what machine learning is and how our researchers use it.
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** How Pew Research Center is covering COVID-19 ([link removed])
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As an organization committed to informing the public by providing facts and analysis about the most pressing issues of the day, Pew Research Center pivoted in the early days of the U.S. coronavirus outbreak to cover the far-reaching impact that the global pandemic ([link removed]) is having on our society. We have enlisted staff from all research areas at the Center to capture multiple facets of how the coronavirus pandemic is impacting life at the local, national and international level – and since mid-March, we have produced more than 8 ([link removed]) 0 reports and articles ([link removed]) . The Center’s response to the COVID-19 crisis has also included the difficult decision to suspend much of our international survey work until further notice because most of our international surveys are still conducted
face-to-face ([link removed]) . (Our polling in countries where surveys are conducted by phone is continuing, as is our U.S. polling, which is conducted primarily online ([link removed]) .)
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** Introducing pewmethods: An R package for working with survey data ([link removed])
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In March, Pew Research Center’s survey methods team proudly released version 1.0 of pewmethods ([link removed]) , an R package containing various functions that we use in our day-to-day survey data work. The package was originally envisioned as an internal way to reuse, maintain and share code – but since many of the problems that these functions were designed to solve are not unique to our projects, we made the pewmethods package publicly available on Github ([link removed]) for other researchers. In the blog posts listed below, learn how the pewmethods package can help with creating basic survey weights and carrying out various cleaning, recoding, combining and collapsing tasks. You can also use the package to analyze our international survey data:
* Exploring survey data with the pewmethods R package ([link removed])
* Weighting survey data with the pewmethods R package ([link removed])
* Analyzing international survey data with the pewmethods R package ([link removed])
** Pew Research Center at AAPOR 2020 ([link removed])
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On Thursday, June 11 and Friday, June 12, Pew Research Center experts will present at the annual conference ([link removed]) of the American Association of Public Opinion Research, held virtually. Conference attendees interested in seeing Center researchers speak about developments in research methodology and recent findings can find a schedule of presentations here ([link removed]) . Follow @pewmethods ([link removed]) and #AAPOR on Twitter to keep up with the event in real time, and watch the all-attendee kickoff session videos ([link removed]) to hear Vice President of Research Claudia Deane talk about our COVID-19 survey work.
** Have you seen our American News Pathways data tool? ([link removed])
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Our yearlong American News Pathways project focuses how Americans' news habits and attitudes relate to what they hear, perceive and know about the 2020 U.S. election campaign ([link removed]) and the COVID-19 outbreak ([link removed]) . Use our interactive data tool ([link removed]) to examine election- and coronavirus-related survey questions by media trait or demographic group. You can also download our datasets ([link removed]) connect to our API ([link removed]) .
** New on 'Decoded' ([link removed])
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Pew Research Center’s Decoded ([link removed]) 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:
* Communicating technical content ([link removed])
* The challenges of using real-time epidemiological data in a public health crisis ([link removed])
* The ‘class size paradox’: How individual- and group-level perspectives differ, and why it matters in research ([link removed])
** Featured datasets
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Pew Research Center makes its data available to the public for secondary analysis after a period of time. All of the Center’s available datasets can be downloaded here ([link removed]) . See this post ([link removed]) for more information on how to use our datasets and contact us at
[email protected] (mailto:
[email protected]?subject=Question%20about%20datasets) with any questions.
American News Pathways April 2020 Survey ([link removed])
Survey conducted April 20-26, 2020, among 10,139 U.S. adults.
COVID-19 Late March 2020 ([link removed])
Survey conducted March 19-24, 2020, among 11,537 U.S. adults.
American News Pathways March 2020 Survey ([link removed])
Survey conducted March 10-16, 2020, among 8,914 U.S. adults.
American Trends Panel Wave 41 (views of America in 2050) ([link removed])
Survey conducted Dec. 10-23, 2018 among 2,524 U.S. adults.
** Support Pew Research Center
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In times of uncertainty, good decisions demand good data. Please support Pew Research Center with a contribution on the Center’s behalf to our parent organization, The Pew Charitable Trusts.
DONATE ([link removed])
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Pew Research Center is a nonpartisan fact tank. As a neutral source of data and analysis, Pew Research Center does not take policy positions.
© 2020 Pew Research Center
