It began in 1990 as a polling project at a newspaper company. Today Pew Research Center is one of the best-known survey operations in the United States, and it describes itself as a “fact tank” rather than a think tank: it counts opinion and reports the numbers, and stops there.
From Times Mirror to Pew
The Times Mirror newspaper company created the original project in 1990 and called it the Times Mirror Center for the People & the Press. Its job was regular polling on politics and major policy questions. Andrew Kohut became director in 1993. Three years later The Pew Charitable Trusts took over as sponsor and renamed it the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press.
The Trusts liked what they saw. They went on to build other projects on the same neutral, “just-the-facts” model: the Project for Excellence in Journalism in 1997, the Pew Internet & American Life Project in 1999, and the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, the Pew Hispanic Center and the Pew Global Attitudes Project, all in 2001.
In 2004 the Trusts gathered these under one roof, setting up Pew Research Center in Washington, D.C., as a subsidiary, with Kohut as its first president. A year later it added the Pew Social & Demographic Trends project, which pairs original surveys with analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data and other sources.
Who has run it
Kohut stepped down in 2013 and became founding director. Alan Murray took over as the second president. In October 2014 the job went to Michael Dimock, a protege of Kohut who had joined the Center in 2000. He still leads it. In 2015 Dimock started a push to test how far traditional survey methods could be strengthened, and what newer methods at the edge of social science might add.
What it does and does not do
Cornell University’s Roper Center for Public Opinion Research, which archives survey data, describes the Center as nonpartisan and says it takes no policy positions. Its work spans polling, demographic research and content analysis. Topics include U.S. politics and policy, journalism and media, internet, science and technology, religion and public life, Hispanic trends, global attitudes, and social and demographic trends. The Roper Center notes that the Center is a charter member of the American Association of Public Opinion Research’s Transparency Initiative.
Pew defines its own terms. Nonprofit means it is funded by charitable dollars and does no work for hire. Nonpartisan means it never aligns with a political group, candidate or ideology. Nonadvocacy means it studies people’s views “without an agenda” and offers no policy recommendations. The Center says its funding comes from The Pew Charitable Trusts and other organizations, that its leadership and staff choose what to study, and that its research is free to read. A nine-member volunteer board stewards it.
Its surveys ask thousands of people of different ages, ethnicities and backgrounds about jobs, politics, religion, education and health. Interviews and digital, economic and demographic data supplement them, and each piece goes through several rounds of review before publication.
Sources
- Our History | Pew Research Center
- Pew Research Center | Roper Center for Public Opinion Research (Cornell University)
- About Pew Research Center | Pew Research Center
