Pew Research Center has deep roots in U.S. public opinion research. Launched initially as a project focused primarily on U.S. policy and politics in the early 1990s, the Center has grown over time to study a wide range of topics vital to explaining America to itself and to the world. Our hallmarks: a rigorous approach to methodological quality, complete transparency as to our methods, and a commitment to exploring and evaluating ongoing developments in data collection. All data that we publish is accompanied by a detailed methods report such as the one here and here.
The American Trends Panel
Try our email course on polling
Want to know more about polling? Take your knowledge to the next level with a short mini-course from Pew Research Center.
From the 1980s until relatively recently, most national polling organizations conducted surveys by telephone, relying on live interviewers to call randomly selected Americans across the country. Then came the internet. While it took survey researchers some time to adapt to the idea of online surveys, a quick look at the public polls on an issue like presidential approval reveals a landscape now dominated by online polls rather than phone polls.
Most of our U.S. surveys are conducted on the American Trends Panel (ATP), Pew Research Center’s national survey panel of about 10,000 randomly selected U.S. adults. ATP participants are recruited offline using random sampling from the U.S. Postal Service’s residential address file, and respondents are reimbursed for their time. Most panelists complete the surveys online using smartphones, tablets or desktop devices. Non-internet and internet-averse panelists are called by an interviewer to complete surveys on the phone. Learn more about how people in the U.S. take Pew Research Center surveys.
Methods 101
Our video series helps explain the fundamental concepts of survey research including random sampling, question wording, mode effects, non probability surveys and how polling is done around. the world.
The Center also conducts custom surveys of special populations (e.g., Muslim Americans, Jewish Americans, Black Americans, Hispanic Americans, teenagers) that are not readily studied using national, general population sampling. The Center’s survey research is sometimes paired with demographic or organic data to provide new insights. In addition to our U.S. survey research, you can also read more details on our international survey research, our demographic research and our data science methods.
Our survey researchers are committed to contributing to the larger community of survey research professionals, and are active in American Association of Public Opinion Research (AAPOR) and is a charter member of the AAPOR Transparency Initiative.
Frequently asked questions about surveys
- Why am I never asked to take a poll?
- Can I volunteer to be polled?
- Why should I participate in surveys?
- What good are polls?
- Do pollsters have a code of ethics? If so, what is in the code?
- How are your surveys different from market research?
- How are people selected for your polls?
- Do people lie to pollsters?
- How can I tell a high-quality poll from a lower-quality one?
- How can a small sample of 1,000 (or even 10,000) accurately represent the views of 250,000,000+ Americans?
- Do your surveys include people who are offline?
Reports on the state of polling
- Key Things to Know about Election Polling in the United States
- A Field Guide to Polling: 2020 Edition
- Confronting 2016 and 2020 Polling Limitations
- What 2020’s Election Poll Errors Tell Us About the Accuracy of Issue Polling
- Q&A: After misses in 2016 and 2020, does polling need to be fixed again? What our survey experts say
- Understanding how 2020 election polls performed and what it might mean for other kinds of survey work
- Can We Still Trust Polls?
- Political Polls and the 2016 Election
- Flashpoints in Polling: 2016
Sign up for our Methods newsletter
The latest on survey methods, data science and more, delivered quarterly.