Pressure of Truth
Exposing the spin on all sides of the news.
Outlet profile

University of Michigan / Institute for Social Research

U.S. academic research institute (nonpartisan survey research; not a news outlet)

Owned byPart of the University of Michigan, a public research university in Ann Arbor governed by an elected Board of Regents.
FundingMostly external research grants and contracts, mainly from federal agencies (National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health and others), plus foundations and university support. Its Surveys of Consumers is run as a long-running university research program. ISR sells no advertising and has no subscription revenue.
On the administrationmostly neutral

Background

ISR was established on February 1, 1949, and grew out of the university's Survey Research Center and Research Center for Group Dynamics. It is described as the largest academic social research and survey organization in the world. Its best-known projects include the Surveys of Consumers (monthly consumer sentiment, which reached its 696th monthly survey in July 2026), the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, the Health and Retirement Study and the Monitoring the Future study. It is not a news outlet, but media and markets treat its releases as news. Its work is peer-reviewed or methodologically documented, and the institute does not take an ideological line. Its sentiment index is a survey measure that can swing with the political leanings of respondents. Researchers have noted that the index's partisan gaps can shape how it is read. Since 2025, federal science cuts have affected ISR-linked work. The National Science Foundation ended many grants, and the social science directorate made far fewer new awards. One example is a dementia-data project led by an ISR researcher, which was defunded. Coverage of ISR therefore describes it as a data source that the administration's policies affect, not as a political actor. I did not find evidence of a partisan editorial slant in its published reports.

Sources

  1. University of Michigan Institute for Social Research (Wikipedia)
  2. Surveys of Consumers - University of Michigan
  3. Surveys of Consumers (ISR Survey Research Center)
  4. ‘Complete devastation’: How NSF gutted its social sciences research (Science)
  5. NSF lags in grant awards and Trump again proposes deep cuts to science (APS News)

Profile compiled 2026-10-16; refreshed when ownership, funding, or the administration changes.

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