How does the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project (Pew Internet Project) decide which subjects to study and how to frame that research? The most important subjects were established in the earliest days of the Project: families, communities, e-health, education, politics, and news. The new topics we explore emerge from our observations of technology trends, discussions with our funders, and good-spirited arguments among staffers. We always have to make assumptions about which internet activities are important enough that we will capture evidence of them in the big, national phone surveys we do.
Truth be told, that is one of the best parts of the job: trying to make the right guess about which technologies are emerging or showing a trend – up or down – in usage. And of course the other fun part of the job is exploring the survey data and explaining its meaning.