The most significant pandemic of our lifetime arrived as the United States was experiencing three major societal trends: a growing divide between partisans of the left and right, decreasing trust in many institutions, and a massive splintering of the information environment.

COVID-19 did not cause any of this, but these forces fueled the country’s divided response. Looking back, nearly three-quarters of U.S. adults (72%) say the pandemic did more to drive the country apart than to bring it together.

Pew Research Center conducted this study to better understand how Americans were impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. Most data on Americans’ current views and experiences is from a survey of 9,593 U.S. adults conducted Oct. 21-27, 2024. Data on experiences in the workplace is from a separate survey of 5,273 U.S. workers conducted Oct. 7-13, 2024.

Everyone who completed these surveys is a member of the Center’s American Trends Panel (ATP), a group of people recruited through national, random sampling of residential addresses who have agreed to take surveys regularly. This kind of recruitment gives nearly all U.S. adults a chance of selection. Surveys were conducted either online or by telephone with a live interviewer. The surveys are weighted to be representative of the U.S. adult population by gender, race, ethnicity, partisan affiliation, education and other factors. Read more about the ATP’s methodology.

Here are the questions from the late October survey used for this report, the topline and the survey methodology. Here are the topline and survey methodology for questions from the Oct 7-13 workers survey.