When the ATP was created in 2014, the first group of panelists was invited to join the panel at the end of a large, national survey offered in English and Spanish that was conducted by randomly calling both landline and cellphone numbers. Two additional recruitments were conducted using the same method in 2015 and 2017, respectively.

In 2018, the ATP switched from telephone to address-based sampling (ABS) recruitment. This means that invitations are sent to a random sample of households selected from the U.S. Postal Service’s master list of all residential addresses, the Computerized Delivery Sequence File or CDS.

I guess I'd be slightly more likely to look into a survey based on physical mail than an unknown phone call (which I would for sure ignore).

The ATP didn’t always include the option to take surveys with an interviewer by phone. From 2016 to early 2024, the ATP operated as an online-only panel where all panelists took surveys on the web. People in households without internet service were provided with a data plan and tablets that they could use to take the surveys online.

Interesting adjustment to be more inclusive.

The selection of news sources actually sounds pretty well balanced.

We also set out to ask about a range of sources across different platforms (e.g., internet, television, print, radio, and new media like podcasts and social media). Relatedly, we wanted to capture different elements of the information environment, such as both legacy news outlets and newer, nontraditional news sources.