Methodological Research

About half of Americans see their identity reflected very well in the census’s race and ethnicity questions.

Here are answers to some frequently asked questions about Pew Research Center’s report “Jewish Americans in 2020”

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.

We thought it would be valuable to combine our study of news coverage itself with data on people’s views about, and exposure to, that coverage.

Looking at final estimates of the outcome of the 2020 U.S. presidential race, 93% of national polls overstated the Democratic candidate’s support among voters, while nearly as many (88%) did so in 2016.

Polling organizations have taken close looks at how election surveys are designed, administered and analyzed. We are no exception.

Given the errors in 2016 and 2020 election polling, how much should we trust polls that attempt to measure opinions on issues?

The 9-point fall in approval was the largest change between two Pew Research Center polls since Donald Trump took office.

Since the establishment of the ATP, the Center has gradually migrated away from telephone polling and toward online survey administration, and since early 2019, the Center has conducted most of its U.S. polling on the ATP. This shift has major implications for the way the Center measures trends in American religion – including those from the Center’s flagship Religious Landscape Studies, which were conducted by phone in 2007 and 2014.

The coronavirus outbreak inflicted disruptions on 2020 census operations, raising questions about how accurate the decennial count will be.