We asked for your feedback and the results are in!
Earlier this year, we launched an audience survey to better understand the needs of journalists, educators and students across our global audience.
We asked about the topics and resources you find most useful. We also asked questions aimed at gauging how well you can evaluate research quality and how difficult it is for journalists to access academic research and explain it to the public.
Just over 1,100 people took our audience survey, which ran from March 6 to May 5. The answers given by this sample of people may not represent the views and experiences of our whole audience — about 40,000 people subscribe to our weekly e-mail newsletter, and more than 1.1 million people visit our website each year. But this input is valuable. It provides meaningful insights into the impact of our work and who engages with our tip sheets, research articles, webinars and other resources — all of which we provide for free to everyone, no matter who they are or where they live.
Most importantly, the results will help us identify ways we can improve as we work toward our primary goal: bridging the gap between newsrooms and academia by helping journalists find and use high-quality research in their coverage of public policy topics.
If you completed the survey, thank you. We are grateful for your help. Here’s some of what we learned:
- Most people who completed the questionnaire were either journalists or journalism teachers and professors. But journalism students, retired journalists and college faculty who teach other subjects weighed in, too, as did hundreds of people from other fields, including health care providers, attorneys and librarians.
- The vast majority of survey takers find us trustworthy. In fact, 80% of the people who answered that question said they consider The Journalist’s Resource “very trustworthy.”
- When we asked participants how The Journalist’s Resource has helped them, 69% said we helped them better understand or explain a policy issue and 51% said we introduced them to databases and other sources of information. One-third said we helped them ask better questions.
- Many respondents come to our website often. About a third said they visit once a week or more, on average, and 5% go daily, or every weekday. Another 31% go to JournalistsResource.org once a month or more, on average.
- The topics people said they seek out most frequently on our website are politics and government followed by media, health, economics and education.
- Almost half of participants indicated they are “somewhat” confident in their ability to differentiate between high- and low-quality research. Another 12% indicated they are “a little” confident and 3% said they were not at all confident. A sizeable proportion — 37% — described themselves as “very confident.”
- Nearly three-fourths of respondents did not know that we allow everyone to republish our written work for free. But they do now.
Keep reading for more details about the questions we asked, most of which were multiple-choice questions, and the responses we received. Not every participant answered every question and not everyone got the same questions. For example, we asked journalism educators questions that we did not ask journalists or journalism students.
Survey takers included 356 journalists, 254 educators, 35 students and 42 people who identified themselves as policymakers or government employees.
Who uses our materials?
Just under 40% of participants identified as professional journalists and 4% identified as students, some of whom are journalism students reporting for campus news outlets and freelancing for professional news organizations. Meanwhile, 26% of survey participants identified as a teacher, professor or educator. About half of these individuals indicated they teach journalism, mass communication, media ethics or media law.
We were pleasantly surprised by the number of people outside journalism who said they read our materials and use them in their own work or in conversations with colleagues, local community members, friends and family members. Four percent of survey takers identified as policymakers or government employees, while 28% chose “none of these” and explained their former or current jobs. Included are retired journalists and research faculty as well as working attorneys, consultants, health care providers, librarians and administrators of nonprofit organizations.
How we’ve helped you
We wanted to know how we have helped you in the past, so we can better help you in the future. We asked: “How has The Journalist’s Resource helped you? Please check all that apply.” We gave survey takers nine response options.
Nearly 70% of the 807 people who answered the question said we helped them better understand or explain a policy issue and 51% said we introduced them to databases and other sources of information.
About 4 in 10 respondents said we pointed them to researchers with expertise in a specific topic, helped them fact-check claims and provided ideas for news stories, charts, graphics or projects. Meanwhile, 35% said we helped them understand academic research terminology or research methods, 32% said we helped them ask better questions and 18% said we helped them avoid making an error.
Five percent of participants indicated that The Journalist’s Resource “has not helped me.”
When we asked survey takers which of our resources are most helpful, they resoundingly pointed to our research roundups and research-based explainers. What we asked: “Which of these resources from The Journalist’s Resource have you found most helpful? Please pick up to three.”
Of the 755 people who answered this question, 63% said they found our research roundups, which gather and summarize key research papers on a given subject, particularly helpful while 60% chose our research-based explainers, which offer historical context and evidence about newsy topics.
Just under half indicated that our tip sheets on how to cover a specific policy issue, such as water fluoridation, private school vouchers and sports stadium financing, are one of our most helpful resources. And 42% picked tip sheets aimed at helping journalists find, vet, interpret and/or explain research.
Survey takers indicated that, for them, our articles that focus on a single new research paper and our webinars are not as beneficial as these other resources. Less than a third of respondents said single-study articles are among our most helpful resources and 20% chose our webinars, which feature journalists and researchers discussing topics such as covering immigration, improving mental health in newsrooms or investigating academic research fraud.
Helping educators train journalists
We’re thrilled that journalism professors and teachers continue to use our materials to help prepare the next generation of journalists. We’re also pleasantly surprised at how many other educators use our materials.
We asked people who identified as professors, teachers or other educators, “As an educator, how have you used The Journalist’s Resource materials in your classes? Please check all that apply.” A total of 229 answered the question.
Close to 7 in 10 told us they had incorporated our materials into a class discussion or project. And 35% indicated they had assigned students to read or use our materials.
Many educators said our materials came in handy outside the classroom, too. Slightly more than 40% said our materials helped them with some aspect of their own research or academic writing. Almost a third said they had used our resources to explain research methods or terminology to someone who is not a student.
Topics you’re most interested in — and want more of
To better understand your needs, we also wanted to know which of The Journalist’s Resource’s core subject areas you seek out most often. Our website is divided into eight policy topics: criminal justice, economics, education, environment, health, media, politics and government, and race and gender.
We asked participants to indicate their top subject areas with this prompt: “This is a list of policy topics that The Journalist’s Resource spotlights on its website. Please read the list and select the topic areas you look at most often when you visit the site. Please pick up to three.”
Politics and government was most popular. Of the 855 participants who answered this question, 68% said it’s one of the subjects they look at most often. Media, picked by 54% of participants, was the second-most popular. Following that was health, which 44% named as a top interest, and economics, which 38% chose as a top topic. Education also was a popular, chosen by 37% of participants.
After that, we asked participants: “Which of these policy topics should The Journalist’s Resource provide more materials on? Please pick up to three.” A total of 846 people answered this question. Their responses generally followed a similar pattern, although quite a few people suggested we delve more deeply into other policy issues.
While 36% indicated they wanted more on politics and government, 29% chose media, 26% picked health and 25% said they wanted more on the environment. At the same time, 24% of participants said they’d like us to do more on economics and 21% wanted more on education.
One-fifth of respondents said they wanted us to provide more resources in “another topic.” Their suggested topics included technology, immigration, housing and religion as well as in statistics, fact-checking, evaluating research quality and understanding science.
The remaining 20% of respondents who answered this question chose “I do not know or I’m unsure.”
Our ‘Know Your Research’ section
We created a series of “Know Your Research” tip sheets and explainers to help journalists understand academic research studies and avoid common errors when reporting on them. To help us plan future materials for this section of our website, we included this question in our audience survey: “Which of these topics have been helpful to you? Please choose all that apply.”
This is the list of topics we mentioned and the proportion of survey participants who found them helpful. A combined 763 people answered this question.
- Finding or getting free access to research: 51%.
- Vetting the quality of a research paper: 33%.
- Interpreting polls and surveys: 45%.
- Understanding research terms and methods: 36%.
- Learning about common errors journalists make when reporting on research: 45%.
About a fifth of the people who answered this question said they were unfamiliar with or did not use the “Know Your Research” section.
Vetting research and understanding data
We included two questions aimed at understanding how well our audience can vet research and interpret statistical analyses — two critically important skills for journalists who report on research and incorporate it into their work.
We first asked, “Which of these best describes how confidently you can differentiate between high-quality research and low-quality research?” We then provided four response options.
Of the 759 people who answered the question, 37% rated themselves as “very” confident and 48% chose “somewhat” confident. Meanwhile, 12% indicated they were “a little” confident and 3% said they were not at all confident.
After that question, we asked this: “Which of these best describes how confidently you can interpret statistical analyses as presented in academic research papers?” We provided the same four response options.
Nearly half of the 740 people who answered that question described themselves as “somewhat” confident and 26% indicated they were “a little” confident. About one-fifth responded with “very confident” while 9% said they were not at all confident.
Barriers to using research in news coverage
We wanted to know more about the barriers journalists face in using research to strengthen their news stories. So, we asked people who identified as journalists, “Which, if any, of these affect your ability to incorporate academic research into your news reporting process? Please check all that apply.”
We provided seven response options. A combined 120 journalists answered.
The overwhelming majority of them — 68% — pointed to a lack of time to find or read research on deadline. Finding researchers on deadline was a problem for 45% of journalists.
Other common hurdles: 43% said they have difficulty accessing academic journal articles, 33% have difficulty understanding academic jargon, 23% cited a lack of confidence in their ability to identify problems in research and 20% cited a lack of knowledge about research methods.
A smaller proportion of journalists — 9% — indicated there are “other” barriers as well, and provided written examples. One journalist said they have trouble finding research that provides local data. Another said they did not have time to seek training on how to incorporate research into their work and another cited a “lack of interest from upper-level editors.”
What do you get from us that you cannot get elsewhere?
To better understand what drives people to The Journalist’s Resource, we asked survey participants what we provide that they cannot get somewhere else. Their answers, written in their own words, varied considerably. Many, however, focused on our clear explanations, careful evaluation of research and knack for presenting information in a way some people had not considered.
Here are some of the unique things that participants said we offer:
- “Explainers on how things work, what is reliable (and what is not) and where to go to get more”
- “handy hints that I didn’t think I needed”
- “Research roundups about the beats my teams cover written in a simple, easy to understand format I can review quickly in order to identify how to dig further.”
- “Denise-Marie Ordway’s articles on stats and using numbers.”
- “The timeliness and comprehensiveness of tip sheets is unique”
- “Well researched information on topics I’d otherwise avoid due to lack of time to do the research myself.”
- “A perspective that is outside what I might have been aware of or one that I had not thought of or about.”
- “High-quality, rigorous and trustworthy information, data, and analysis about a range of issues. I’m pretty skeptical of most things I read (and I read A LOT and disseminate a lot for a large list serve) and this is one I trust implicitly.”
- “Great specific dives into subjects that are often vexing for journalists.”
Who are the journalists who come to us for help?
Most journalists who participated in the survey work full-time at news outlets. The largest proportion — 30% — said they work at newspapers. Meanwhile, 28% work at online only publications, 11% work at TV stations or programs and 10% work at radio stations or programs. About 8% work for a magazine and 6% work at a wire service. Just 1% said they primarily report the news via podcast.
Of the journalists who responded, 15% indicated they were freelance reporters or editors. And half said they worked for online only publications most often during the previous two months. Newspapers were the second most common outlet type that freelance journalists reported working at most often in recent weeks.
A third type of journalist — those who work in the field in another capacity — took our audience survey, although in much smaller numbers. About 50 of these journalists weighed in, almost a third of whom said they work for journalism support organizations such as the Poynter Institute, Committee to Protect Journalists and Solutions Journalism Network. Another 4% work for a research organization that primarily studies journalism or issues closely related to journalism and 20% work for organizations that do not focus specifically on journalism.
More than 80% of the journalists who took the survey said they have been a journalist for more than a decade, and 17% said they have been one for more than four decades. Just 11% of journalists who responded had been in the field five to 10 years and 4% had been a journalist less than five.
Who are the educators who use our materials?
About half of the educators who took our audience survey said they primarily teach journalism, media ethics or another type of mass communication. Meanwhile, 11% reported primarily teaching public policy and 7% teach STEM subjects — science, technology, engineering and math — that are not directly connected to journalism. Just over a third said they teach other topics, including health science.
The vast majority teach either undergraduate college students or graduate students, including students enrolled in master’s, doctoral, law and medical degree programs. But 9% are high school teachers, 4% are community college professors, 4% teach journalism as part of a community-based program and 9% indicated they teach in a different program or environment.
What do we know about the students who took the survey?
Students who took the audience survey were mostly college students — 33% were undergraduate students, 27% were graduate students and 7% were doctoral students. But 27% were high school students and 7% identified as a different type of student.
Fifteen students reported practicing journalism, either by reporting for a campus news outlet or interning at or freelancing for a professional outlet.
‘Very trustworthy’ materials, most respondents said
We asked participants, “In your opinion, how trustworthy are The Journalist’s Resource materials, as a whole?” Of the 900 people who answered the question, 80% said “very trustworthy,” 10% said “somewhat trustworthy” and 2% said “a little trustworthy.”
One percent of respondents said our materials are “not trustworthy,” and 7% indicated that none of those four response options applied to them. Some people in this last category elaborated in in writing, noting, for example, that they were “unsure” about the trustworthiness of our materials. One survey taker wrote: “No reporting is trusted in this current social media craze.”
How we informed your work: You shared examples
We ended our survey by asking people to share a specific example of how The Journalist’s Resource had informed their work during the past year. Here are some of the examples they shared with us, written in their own words.
- “I used Naseem Miller’s resource page on childhood vaccines to verify some basics when editing a story.”
- “I attended the recent webinar on Immigration and it changed my mind on how to use data. Am currently looking at getting training on data.”
- “I am continually cognizant of the diff btwn “Percent change versus percentage-point change” because of that JR article.”
- “I’m an editor. I often send collaborators to the site/newsletter to ground themselves on topics we’re working and as a solid resource in general.”
- “I specifically used the resources published ahead of the presidential elections as background for some analysis”
- “Helped me identify reliable research on the use and impact of education vouchers”
- “I’ve been investigating trauma-informed reporting, and this is one of the places I found some great information and resources.”
- “I have used ‘AI in the newsroom: What researchers learned from the AP and the BBC’ to inform my research into how AI is/should change journalism education.
- “I used the article ‘Why journalists should look at question order when covering survey and poll results’ to explain to students how reporting on polling results can be complicated and how polling data should not be equated with facts, but rather should be seen as one piece of evidence.”
- “I used a number of resources in class about covering government meetings, which students hate to do, but I think the resources made it clearer and less uncomfortable for them.”
- “I’m about to use the meta analysis on fluoride for an essay.”
- “I have been writing about recruiting and employing immigrants in US businesses over the last year for a book I just published. As I recall, information you had about some aspect of immigration was helpful in my thinking and writing.”
- “Webinar on scientific misconduct featuring E. Bik and I. Oransky informed an investigation into a hoax-type fraud in the social sciences.”
- “I used graphics and tables pertaining to how the climate crisis is affecting farmers.”
- “I wrote a piece about monkeypox (my county was giving out vaccines) and the explainer piece was helpful.”
- “Shared the Tip sheet on ‘reporting minority-serving institutions under Trump.’ Shared ‘economic data sources for journalists’ for a TV show. ‘Covering tariffs’ was a hot one recently.”
- “found the item on sports stadium funding very interesting for my civic engagement work in my own community — it provided thought-provoking insights into ways of querying overblown claims about the benefits of spending taxpayers money on questionable projects.”
- “I’m using several pieces in our soon-to-be discussed strategy document I wrote for how to do our work under a fact-free, bare bones federal government.”
- “Can’t pick just one, I’m afraid. But I do turn to you as a resource particularly in interpreting health data. As a member of Institutional Research Boards I find it helps ensure that we are accurate and thorough in addressing difficult questions.”
- “I pretty regularly refer back to several of the articles on statistics and reading polls accurately!”
- “Read all the Goldsmith Prize finalist tipsheets and incorporated much of the award winning reporters’ advice on current investigations.”
- “Several times it has helped me understand the jargon I’ve found in a research report (things like margin of error, deviation from the mean, etc)”
- “I teach a class on Race. The Journalist’s provided great information regarding Hispanic education; I used articles addressing deadly police chases and the information about the unknown national database; I used the information for the DEI tracker. There is other information i used that I am not mentioning.”
- “I learned a great deal about reporting tips related to health and the environment from two articles published last year on Dengue and carbon offsets. The overviews provided and summaries of several health research studies, and how carbon markets work plus the reporting strategies, it was a superb reading and analysis.”
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