Purpose Of Pew Research

Our Survey Methodology In Detail A normal method that Pew research usually uses is a random call to individuals in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. They call landlines and cellphones, but landlines only make up 25% of the survey and 75% cellphones. They randomly generate numbers of the last two digits of phone numbers when dialing. They also proportionally stratify their calls so that the amount of calls to a certain area is proportional to that areas share of phone numbers. When they call a landline they ask to speak with the youngest male 18 or older and some ask for the youngest female 18 or older to interview, and they do this to improve participation among younger people. They do have some sampling errors which average out

Seven calls are made to each phone number to try and get a response. Pew Research reported that there is a 5-15% response rate which in my opinion seems pretty bad, but they said this is the average for most opinion polls. Pew research also does some data weighting to account for some biases like household size, people with both cell phones and landlines, and they also weight based on demographics collected by the US census Bureau. The goal of weighting the data is to eliminate non response bias which they do a pretty good job of, but it can never be perfect. When analyzing the data collected they look at the questioners and compare them to previous ones with similar questions to see if there are any changes that are statistically significant. Overall, I think they try their best to eliminate bias, but with only a 5-15% response rate it seems like they might not be capturing

Having good questions is the foundation to a good survey. Certain wording can influence people's response; therefore, it is referred to as a science when creating these questions. Pew Research has their staff to work together to develop questions, and they start off by identifying the topics being covered. When they want to see how people's opinions have changed it is essential to have the surveys worded the same of very similar in order to make sure each survey isn’t influencing their response. Open-ended and closed-ended question can also vary the results so often researchers will start with open ended questions and then develop a survey with closed-ended question based on those answers. Also wording is a huge part of how questions are designed, even one word can make a big difference in the answers people give. Just like word choice question order is very important and can make people answer differently based on which types of questions are asked first. Pretests, pilot, and focus groups can all be conducted to see how a group will respond to a survey, and this way the researchers can make changes before giving the survey out to