Posts Tagged ‘Pew Research Center’
“Aging, quite simply, is a loss of information.”*…
And as it is in the human condition, so it is on the internet. As the Pew Research Center reports: 38% of webpages that existed in 2013 are no longer accessible a decade later…
The internet is an unimaginably vast repository of modern life, with hundreds of billions of indexed webpages. But even as users across the world rely on the web to access books, images, news articles and other resources, this content sometimes disappears from view.
A new Pew Research Center analysis shows just how fleeting online content actually is:
A quarter of all webpages that existed at one point between 2013 and 2023 are no longer accessible, as of October 2023. In most cases, this is because an individual page was deleted or removed on an otherwise functional website.
For older content, this trend is even starker. Some 38% of webpages that existed in 2013 are not available today, compared with 8% of pages that existed in 2023.
This “digital decay” occurs in many different online spaces. We examined the links that appear on government and news websites, as well as in the “References” section of Wikipedia pages as of spring 2023…
The not-so-pretty results of their study, and an account of their methodology at “When Online Content Disappears,” from @pewresearch.
Happily, the Internet Archive‘s wonderful Wayback Machine, where one can find saved copies of (many, many, if not all) web pages that have disappeared, is a(n at least partial) antidote. Indeed, via a background script, the Wayback Machine supplies the most recent archived version of many Wikipedia links that have gone dead.
(Image above: source— where one can find the origin of “404” as the designator of a broken link…)
* David Sinclair, controversial anti-aging researcher
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As we search for the missing, we might send elegantly-designed birthday greetings to John Cocke; he was born on this date in 1925. A computer engineer, he made numerous important contributions to computer architecture and to optimizing compiler design. Most notably, he is considered by many to be “the father of RISC architecture” (which first appeared in his design of the IBM 801).
“I made no resolutions for the New Year. The habit of making plans, of criticizing, sanctioning and molding my life, is too much of a daily event for me.”*…
For many, the turn of a new year is a time of introspection– and a time of commitment to improvement. The Pew Research Center weighs in on how we’re doing with that…
It’s the time of year when New Year’s resolutions are made – and sometimes broken.
Three-in-ten Americans report making at least one resolution this year, with half of this group making more than one, according to a new Pew Research Center survey.
Nearly a month into the new year, the survey also finds that most people who made resolutions have stuck with them, although 13% say they have not kept any of them.
…
Across all age groups, sizable majorities of those who made resolutions this year say their goals focus on health, exercise or diet.
Overall, 79% say their resolutions concern health. Smaller but still sizable shares made resolutions about money or finances (61%), personal relationships (57%), hobbies or personal interests (55%), or work and career (49%).
…
Less than a month into the new year, a large majority of those who made resolutions (87%) say they have kept at least some of them.
About six-in-ten adults who made at least one resolution (59%) say they have kept all of them so far, while 28% say they have kept some of them. Another 13% say they have kept none of them.
There are only modest demographic differences when it comes to who has broken resolutions and who has stuck with them so far.
Of the 70% of Americans who did not make any New Year’s resolutions this year, a majority (56%) say their main reason for not doing so is they simply do not like to make resolutions.
About one-in-ten (12%) of those who didn’t make a resolution say they break them too easily. Nearly as many (9%) say they couldn’t think of a resolution to make, while 6% say they forgot to make one this year…
“New Year’s resolutions: Who makes them and why,” from @pewresearch.
* Anais Nin
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As we revisit resolve, we might recall that today is Groundhog Day, rooted in Pennsylvania Dutch lore that if a groundhog emerging from its burrow on this day sees its shadow due to clear weather, it will retreat to its den and winter will persist for six more weeks; if it does not see its shadow because of cloudiness, spring will arrive early.
The “official” groundhog is named Punxsutawney Phil, who appears from his hole at Gobbler’s Knole in Pennslyvania every year since 1887. (That said, the first recorded celebration of Groundhog Day, then still known as Candlemas Day, was in the year 1841 in Morgantown, PA.)
While the tradition remains popular in the 21st century, studies have found no consistent correlation between a groundhog seeing its shadow and the subsequent arrival time of spring-like weather.
“In America, everyone is entitled to an opinion, and it is certainly useful to have a few when a pollster shows up”*…
In the last couple of decades, opinion polling in the U.S. has exploded; the number of national pollsters has more than doubled. Over the same period, American lifestyles have changed in ways that have challenged pollsters– and led them to innovate in a quest for accuracy. Indeed, after the embarrassment of the election of 2016, 61% of national pollsters have changed their methods…
The pollsters at The Pew Research Center— arguably the best of bunch– have polled the pollsters…
The 2016 and 2020 presidential elections left many Americans wondering whether polling was broken and what, if anything, pollsters might do about it. A new Pew Research Center study finds that most national pollsters have changed their approach since 2016, and in some cases dramatically. Most (61%) of the pollsters who conducted and publicly released national surveys in both 2016 and 2022 used methods in 2022 that differed from what they used in 2016. The study also finds the use of multiple methods increasing. Last year 17% of national pollsters used at least three different methods to sample or interview people (sometimes in the same survey), up from 2% in 2016.
This study captures what changes were made and approximately when. While it does not capture why the changes were made, public commentary by pollsters suggests a mix of factors – with some adjusting their methods in response to the profession’s recent election-related errors and others reacting to separate industry trends. The cost and feasibility of various methods are likely to have influenced decisions.
This study represents a new effort to measure the nature and degree of change in how national public polls are conducted. Rather than leaning on anecdotal accounts, the study tracked the methods used by 78 organizations that sponsor national polls and publicly release the results. The organizations analyzed represent or collaborated with nearly all the country’s best-known national pollsters. In this study, “national poll” refers to a survey reporting on the views of U.S. adults, registered voters or likely voters. It is not restricted to election vote choice (or “horserace”) polling, as the public opinion field is much broader. The analysis stretches back to 2000, making it possible to distinguish between trends emerging before 2016 (e.g., migration to online methods) and those emerging more recently (e.g., reaching respondents by text message)…
Fascinating– and important: “How Public Polling Has Changed in the 21st Century,” from @pewresearch (via friend PH).
* Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death
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As we consider our answers, we might recall that it was on this date in 2016 that Pew Research Center published the results of a poll on voter satisfaction with U.S. Presidential candidates:
Voter satisfaction with the choice of presidential candidates, already at a two-decade low, has declined even further. A new survey finds that just a third of registered voters say they are very or fairly satisfied with the choices, while 63% say they are not too or not at all satisfied. That represents a 7-percentage-point drop since June in the share of voters expressing satisfaction with their candidate choices…
Already-low voter satisfaction with choice of candidates falls even further
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