# Pew Research Center A nonprofit survey-research organization that describes itself as a **"nonpartisan fact tank."** It is a **subsidiary of The Pew Charitable Trusts**, which is also its primary funder, and it is led by president **Michael Dimock** under a nine-member volunteer board. It appears in prose across this wiki more often than almost any other research body: a reader should be able to find out what kind of organization is behind a number before deciding what the number is worth. ## What it does and does not do The self-imposed limits are the reason its data travels as widely as it does, including across partisan lines. **Does:** surveys of thousands of respondents across ages, ethnicities and backgrounds; in-depth interviews; digital, economic and demographic data analysis; publishes its datasets and question wording; multiple rounds of internal review before publication; distributes everything free of charge. **Does not:** take policy positions, make recommendations, propose solutions, attempt to persuade, align with any party, candidate or ideology, or accept work for hire. Research areas span Politics & Policy, International Affairs, Immigration & Migration, Race & Ethnicity, Religion, Age & Generations, Gender & LGBTQ, Economy & Work, Science, Internet & Technology, News Habits & Media, and a dedicated **methodological research** program. ## Why it matters - **It is the baseline.** When this wiki needs a figure for religious affiliation, partisan sorting, news consumption or generational attitudes, this is usually where it comes from. Knowing that the organization publishes its question wording and refuses advocacy is what makes those numbers usable as evidence rather than as rhetoric. - **Published methodology is checkable.** Because question wording and datasets are public, a disputed finding can be examined rather than argued about. That is not true of most partisan polling, and it is the practical reason to prefer this source. - **It is a target precisely because it is credible.** An organization whose findings are hard to dismiss on methodological grounds gets attacked on institutional grounds instead — funding, staff, framing. That pattern is worth noticing when it appears. > [!warning] What a funder relationship does and does not imply > The Pew Charitable Trusts is the primary funder and the parent organization. The Center states that its staff set the research agenda and that no funder influences its work. That is the Center's own account; it is recorded here as such rather than as independently audited fact. The verifiable safeguard is different and stronger — the published question wording and datasets, which let anyone test a finding directly. ## See Also - [[Brennan Center]] — the comparable research body on voting and democracy - [[Media Hub]]