RAG Search Tool
(Retrieval-Augmented Generation)
To Search
Pew American Trends Survey questionnaires
RAG Search Tool
(Retrieval-Augmented Generation)
To Search
Pew American Trends Survey questionnaires
The Pew American Trends Survey (ATS) waves are repeated surveys Pew Research Center conducts over time to track public opinion on important issues.
Think of it like checking the pulse of the nation at different points—seeing how views change on topics like politics, society, economy, and culture.
🔹 Why "waves"?
Each "wave" is a new round of the survey—kind of like episodes in a series—helping researchers compare how opinions shift over months or years.
🔹 Example Topics Covered:
✅ Political trust
✅ Climate change beliefs
✅ Attitudes on immigration
✅ Views on technology & privacy
✅ Social & cultural trends
Basically, it’s a giant public opinion time machine—letting us see how America’s thoughts evolve! 🚀
When working on a research project, one of the biggest challenges is finding the right dataset that aligns with your topic. The approach here is simple: start with the questions to find the best surveys.
🔍 Why Start with Questions?
Pew Research surveys cover thousands of questions across different topics. Instead of searching through raw datasets, students can use specific keywords to find the actual survey questions that match their research interests.
📖 The Process:
1️⃣ Define Your Research Topic
What are you studying? (e.g., “Attitudes on climate change”)
What data do you need? (e.g., Public opinion on environmental policies)
2️⃣ Search for Relevant Questions
Use the RAG search tool to look for key terms (e.g., "climate change" or "global warming").
The tool will return survey questions that match your topic.
3️⃣ Identify the Right Survey Waves
Each question is tied to a specific Pew dataset (survey wave).
If multiple surveys ask about your topic, you can compare across time to see trends.
4️⃣ Locate & Use the Full Dataset
Once you know which survey wave contains your topic, you can go to Pew’s dataset archive and download the full survey results.
This gives you raw data (responses, demographics, trends) for deeper analysis.
🎯 Example in Action:
Project Topic: How do Americans feel about renewable energy?
Search Terms: "solar energy", "wind power", "climate policy"
Results:
✔ Survey 102 (2019) – Public support for government investment in renewables
✔ Survey 89 (2021) – Changes in attitudes about fossil fuels vs. clean energy
Now, you can use the specific datasets from these surveys instead of blindly searching through tons of files.
When you find a dataset with potential, look for it here.
If it isn't here, email me the wave number and I'll get to work converting from .sav to .csv and adding to the folder.
RETURNING SOON!!
A RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation) search tool is a system that combines information retrieval with AI-powered search to enhance the accuracy of responses.
🔹 How It Works:
Retrieval: The tool first searches a database (like Pew Research questions) using semantic embeddings.
Augmentation: The retrieved most relevant results are ranked based on confidence scores.
Generation: The user receives meaningful search results (without AI hallucination) since they come from real data.
In this setup, the RAG-based search tool is helping users search through a large dataset of Pew Research questions. Here's how:
1️⃣ Data Processing:
Pew Research survey questions were extracted from PDFs & DOCX files.
Each question was assigned a survey number & page number.
2️⃣ Creating a Searchable Index:
The FAISS (Facebook AI Similarity Search) index stores vector embeddings of each question.
These embeddings are created using Sentence Transformers (all-MiniLM-L6-v2), allowing semantic search (understanding meaning, not just keywords).
3️⃣ User Searches a Query:
When a user types a search query (e.g., "climate change"), the RAG search tool:
Encodes the query into an embedding.
Finds the most similar survey questions.
Ranks them by confidence score.
4️⃣ Results Are Presented:
The most relevant Pew Research survey questions appear, grouped by survey number & page.
Users can download the results as a DOCX file.
🔍 Smarter Search: Instead of just matching words, it understands meaning.
📚 Quick Access to Large Data: Scans thousands of questions instantly.
🎯 High Accuracy: Returns only relevant questions, ranked by confidence.
📄 Context & Sources: Every result includes survey number & page, maintaining source integrity.
💡 In summary: This RAG-powered search tool makes finding relevant Pew Research questions easy, allowing users to instantly retrieve survey questions without manually searching PDFs or DOCX files. 🚀