In the interest of transparency, ABC News and The Washington Post are making the full datasets and questionnaires from their pre-election polling this fall publicly available via the PARC survey archive application. We invite others in the research community to independently evaluate and analyze this work.
 
These materials can be accessed at https://2020electionpolls.parc.us.com. Other pre-election poll producers are welcome to contribute their datasets and associated materials to this effort. Please contact us at info@parc.us.com for information.
 
To further extend access, these same research materials also are being donated to the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research at Cornell University. 

At a time of intense focus on public attitudes toward science, the Pew Research Center has released a compelling cross-national survey on science and society conducted in 20 countries across the globe. Majorities across these publics express at least some confidence in scientists and support for national investments in scientific research, though many fewer have “a lot” of confidence, and, in 10 countries, 50 percent or fewer say developments in science have had a “mostly positive effect on society” – including 41 percent in the United States.
 
The study, conducted before the coronavirus pandemic, found broad concern about global warming and other environmental issues and support for environmental protection and alternative energy sources. Among other findings, the wide-ranging survey also found mixed views on developments in artificial intelligence, workplace automation and food science.
 
We at Langer Research Associates are proud to have served as the Pew Center’s primary vendor for surveys in nine of the countries covered by the project, producing nearly 14,000 random-sample interviews to Pew’s high standards in Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Malaysia, the Netherlands, Singapore, Spain and the United Kingdom.

Fifty-seven percent of Americans in our most recent ABC News/Washington Post poll say the next justice of the U.S. Supreme Court should be left to the winner of the presidential election and a Senate vote next year, with coverage (beyond ABC and the Post) by NBC News (here and here), MSNBCPBS News Hour and Capital Public Radio News. The poll also covered the state of the 2020 presidential race, with additional reporting by BloombergForbesUSA Today, and the Houston Chronicle, among others.

We’ve also produced polls in five battleground states this month. Our Pennsylvania poll has been picked up by PoliticoAxiosVice News, and The Hill; Arizona and Florida polls by Fox NewsThe HillNewsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and the SunSentinel; and Wisconsin and Minnesota polls by The New York TimesMinnPost, and the Green Bay Press Gazette, among others. 

More Americans approve than disapprove of Joe Biden’s choice of Sen. Kamala Harris as his running mate in the latest ABC News/Washington Post poll, with rising enthusiasm among Biden supporters in the run up to the Democratic National Convention. It’s been picked up by The New York Times, CNN, Vox, The Los Angeles Times, The Hill, The Week, the Baltimore Sun, The Wichita Eagle, and the Missoula Current.

Among other activities, check out Gary Langer’s advice on how to better understand political polls on the WGBH Forum Network here. He’s joined by guest speakers Wilnelia Rivera, president at Rivera Consulting, Inc.; and James Pindell, political reporter at The Boston Globe.

Six in 10 Americans disapprove of how Donald Trump is handling the coronavirus outbreak in our latest ABC News/Washington Post poll, with coverage, beyond ABC and the Post, by The New York Times, the Los Angeles TimesThe Boston Globe, the San Francisco ChronicleNewsweekThe Guardian, and The Week. The poll also found majority support for the Black Lives Matter movement and advantages for Joe Biden over Trump in trust to handle the coronavirus pandemic and in vote preference overall, with additional reporting by The New York Times, CNN, Politico, Bloomberg, Axios, Forbes, The Hill (here and here), and USA Today.

See also our recent evaluation of long-term trends in the rising association of ideology and political partisanship.

College students’ satisfaction with their courses fell sharply after the sudden shift to online learning in the coronavirus pandemic, with courses often lacking recommended elements of online instruction and students struggling to stay motivated, many challenged by uneven access to internet connectivity. 

Still, a new national survey finds courses that included more engaging elements of online instruction saw substantially higher levels of student satisfaction, offering a constructive path forward in the fall semester ahead.

The results and others come from a newly released, random-sample national survey of 1,008 college students, produced by Langer Research Associates for the education technology nonprofit Digital Promise, with data collection via the Ipsos KnowledgePanel®. See the news release from Digital Promise and its research partner Tyton Partners here and the full report here, as well as additional coverage by the online publication Inside Higher Ed

We’ve had a busy presentation schedule recently. Among our outreach activities:
 
Gary Langer joined Courtney Kennedy of Pew Research Center and Trent Buskirk of Bowling Green State University in a June 17 webinar for journalists covering public opinion surveys, co-sponsored by SciLine, a project of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the American Statistical Association.
 
Gary’s also given two similar presentations on the SEAN COVID-19 Survey Archive, one in a June 4 webinar convened by the World Association for Public Opinion Research and another at the June 11 virtual annual meeting of the American Association for Public Opinion Research.
 
Also at the AAPOR conference, Gary presented on “The Pandemic Election” and on management of probability-based online surveys from a practitioner’s perspective; Christine Filer presented on a study we produced for ESPN on the roots of sports superstardom; and Yulia Baskakova presented on a study we produced on public views of implicit bias, included as a chapter in the forthcoming Cambridge Handbook of Implicit Bias and Racism.

Our latest ABC News/Washington Post poll covered the 2020 presidential election, the COVID-19 pandemic and intention to get a coronavirus vaccination when available. Beyond ABC and the Post, we’ve seen coverage of our election analysis by CNNPoliticoTIMEUSA TodayThe HillFox NewsChina DailyThe AtlanticNewsday, International Business Times and The Guardian; pickup of our report on public attitudes and experiences relating to the coronavirus by Newsweek and U.S. News & World Report; and reports on our vaccination results by The HillThe Washington Times and New York Daily News, among others.

A new piece in the journal Survey Practice gives the back story on our SEAN COVID-19 Survey Archive, an open-access, searchable archive of hundreds of probability-based surveys on the pandemic that we’ve produced and maintain in support of the Societal Experts Action Network. Sign up at the archive for our weekly summaries of the latest COVID-19 surveys.

The Societal Experts Action Network (SEAN) is a group dedicated to supporting critical social, behavioral and economic inquiry relating to the COVID-19 pandemic. Last week we launched two new resources to support its work: An open-access archive of public opinion surveys on COVID-19 and a weekly summary of key results.

The archive, at COVID-19.parc.us.com, houses probability-based survey data and reports measuring public attitudes, behavior and experiences related to the pandemic. Users can search and retrieve individual questions and all related materials, including questionnaires, datasets and reports, as available.

The latest weekly summary of survey results ending April 10th is available here. These summaries also are archived on the SEAN COVID-19 Survey Archive.

The archive currently contains U.S. surveys. Most have been donated by their producers, many of whom are providing additional materials, including datasets and scripted questionnaires, for which we are grateful. We’ll be expanding the collection and aim to include international studies as well. 

If you have produced a survey that you would like to be considered for inclusion, see our Contributors’ Guide. Write us to request administrative rights to upload materials directly or with comments or suggestions.