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Finding Data: Data on Religion

ACCESS TO THESE DATA FILES ARE RESTRICTED TO CURRENTLY ENROLLED/EMPLOYED MEMBERS OF PRINCETON UNIVERSITY.

• Selected Resources for:
  Religion - Non USA ::
  
  
• American Muslims Poll
  Conducted by Zogby Group International for The Project MAPS: Muslims in American Public Square, Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding (CMCU). Topics include politics, voting behavior, terrorism, patriotism, the Middle East, community and interfaith activities, images of Islam and attitudes towards Muslims, important issues, and Islam.

  Sample Size: 1,781 Muslim American adults.

• American National Election Studies (1948+)
  Principal academic survey of voting behavior in the United States, conducted biennially since 1956. Basic questions on religious identification and attendance at religious services have been asked throughout the time series, but the religion module was substantially widened and improved starting in 1990, making possible richer analyses of how religion affects political attitudes and behavior. Contains links to download all the data. Also see DSS Study 3047.

• Arts and Religion Survey (1999)
  Offers information on Americans' opinions about the role of the arts relative to religion.

• Association of Religion Data Archives (ARDA)
  Major archive for data on religion. Holds numerous international surveys on religion, including general population surveys, surveys of selected religious groups, surveys of religious professionals, and aggregate church, congregational and denominational data. Notable datasets include:
  • Anti-Semitism in the United States- Results of the 1981 study may be compared to the 1964 study.
  • Churches and Church Membership in the United States - Self-report forms were completed by all participating religious bodies. Data is available on a state level basis for 1952, 1971, 1980, and 1990 as well as a county level basis (1952, 1971, 1980, and 1990).
  • Gallup Poll of Catholics - Interviews were conducted in 1987, 1992, 1993, 1999, and 2005.
  • National Survey of Youth and Religion (NSYR) -- nationally representative telephone survey of 3,290 English & Spanish-speaking teenagers between the ages of 13-17, and their parents. Also includes 80 oversampled Jewish households, not nationally representative, bringing the total number of completed cases to 3,370. Purpose is to research the shape & influence of religion & spirituality in the lives of American youth; to identify effective practices in the religious, moral, and social formation of the lives of youth; to describe the extent & perceived effectiveness of the programs & opportunities that religious communities are offering to their youth; and to foster an informed national discussion about the influence of religion in youth's lives, in order to encourage sustained reflection about and rethinking of our cultural and institutional practices with regard to youth & religion. The 2nd wave was designed to be a re-interview of all Wave 1 youth survey respondents. Parents of the youth respondents were not re-interviewed. At the time of the 2nd survey, respondents were between the ages of 16-21. Conducted from June 9-November 24, 2005. 2nd wave interviews were conducted only in English. Four youth respondents did not participate in the Wave 2 interview due to not being able to understand or speak English. Wave 2 covers many of the same topics as Wave 1. Many of the questions are identical. However, Wave 2 was re-designed to take into account changes in the lives of the respondents as they began to enter young adulthood. Wave 2 included new questions pertaining to behaviors occurring during the transition to adulthood, such as non-marital cohabitation, educational and career aspirations, pregnancy and marriage. In Wave 3 every attempt was made to re-interview all English-speaking Wave 1 youth survey respondents. At the time of the 3rd survey, respondents were between the ages of 18-24. Conducted from September 24, 2007-April 21, 2008. Wave 3 replicated many of the questions asked in Waves 1 & 2 with some changes made to better capture the respondents' lives as they grew older. For example, there were fewer questions on parental monitoring and more on post-high school educational aspirations.
  • Middletown Area Studies - Data were collected from 1978 to 2004. Assessed the views and lifestyles of citizens on a diverse range of subjects. Included questions on life satisfaction, education, income, family, religion, and politics.
  • Presbyterian Panel - Began in 1973 and is an ongoing panel study in which mailed questionnaires are used to survey representative samples of constituency groups of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). These constituency groups include members, elders, and pastors serving in a congregation. Panels are re-sampled every three years.
  • Southern Focus Polls - Southerners tend to slip through the cracks between state surveys, which are unreliable for generalizing to the region, on the one hand, and national sample surveys, which usually contain too few Southerners to allow detailed examination, on the other. Moreover, few surveys routinely include questions specifically about the South. To remedy this situation, the Institute for Research in Social Science and the Center for the Study of the American South sponsor a Southern regional survey, called the Southern Focus Poll. Respondents in both the South and non-South are asked questions about economic conditions in their communities, cultural issues (such as Southern accent and the Confederate flag), race relations, religious involvement, and characteristics of Southerners and Northerners.
  • Survey of American Catholic Priests - Priests were surveyed about satisfaction with their training, their Presbyteral Council, and particularly their priestly ministry. Topics include their views on church authority, the role of the laity, the challenges of the priestly life, public perceptions of the priesthood, and sexuality. Survey results for 1985, 1993, and 2001 are available.
  • System for Catholic Research, Information and Planning - The aim was to develop a dataset describing the U.S. Catholic Church at the diocesan level. Diocesan information collected from Church and other sources were merged with U.S. Census data describing population and other characteristics of the counties that make up each diocese. The total project consists of six decades worth of data -- 1940, 1950, 1960, 1970, 1980, and 1990.
  • U.S. Congregational Life Survey (2001) - Over 300,000 worshipers in over 2,000 congregations across America participated in the U.S. Congregational Life Survey. Three types of surveys were completed in each participating congregation: (a) an Attendee survey completed by all worshipers age 15 and older who attended worship services during the weekend of April 29, 2001; (b) a Congregational Profile describing the congregation's facilities, staff, programs, and worship services completed by one person in the congregation; and a Leader Survey completed by the pastor, priest, minister, rabbi, or other leader. Data sets are supplied for Southern Baptist, United Methodist, and Presbyterian faiths.

• Changing Faiths: Latinos and the Transformation of American Religion (2006 Hispanic Religion Survey)
  In order to explore the complex nature of religion among Latinos, the Pew Hispanic Center and the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life collaborated on a set of public opinion surveys.

• General Social Survey (1972-2008) (GSS)
  Produced biennially since 1994, the GSS is a long running survey of social, cultural and political indicators. In addition to the GSS, topic modules, designed to investigate new issues or to expand the coverage of an existing subject, are administered. Examples of topic modules include computer and Internet, racial and ethnic prejudice, and child mental-health stigma. The GSS has participated since 1985 in the International Social Survey Program. A listing of modules performed through 2008 is available. For quick crosstabs and correlations use the SDA version which is available for free through University of California at Berkeley. For more information, see the NORC website.

  Sample Size: Over the life of the survey, more than 43,000 respondents, with about 3,000 added biennially.

• General Social Survey Topical Module 1991, 1998: Religion
  Conducted in conjunction with the International Social Survey Program.

• International Social Survey Program (ISSP) (1985+)
  1998-2005 is also available in an easy to use comparative program. For the latest see the site's web page. A listing of modules performed through 2008 is available. Ongoing program of crossnational collaboration. Develops topical modules dealing with important areas of social science as supplements to regular national surveys. Every survey includes questions about general attitudes toward various social issues such as the legal system, sex, and the economy. Special topics have included the environment, the role of government, social inequality, social support, family and gender issues, work orientation, the impact of religious background, behavior, and beliefs on social and political preferences, and national identity. Participating countries vary for each topical module.

• Monitoring the Future. 1976+
  Ongoing study of the behaviors, attitudes, and values of American secondary school students, college students, and young adults. Each year, a total of some 50,000 8th, 10th and 12th grade students are surveyed. A number of questions on drug use are asked.

  Sample Size: 8th grade - approx. 18,000; 10th grade - approx. 17,000; 12th grade - approx. 16,000.

• National Congregations Study, Cumulative Dataset (1998 and 2006-2007)
  Nationally representative study of congregations carried out via interviews with congregational informants, mostly clergy.

• National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, Waves I, II, and III, 1994-1996, 2000-2002 (Add Health)
  Collected data for the purpose of providing information on the general health and well-being of adolescents in the United States, including, with respect to such adolescents, information on: (1) the behaviors that promote health and the behaviors that are detrimental to health; and (2) the influence on health of factors particular to the communities in which adolescents reside. Documentation can also be found on the AddHealth site.
  
  Sociometrics has some additional restircted data. To access start in Sociometrics.
  Click on Data Archives.
  Click on Data Archive on Adolescent Pregnancy and Pregnancy Prevention.
  Go to The National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, Waves I, II, and III (Add Health).
  Click on Download Instructions.
  Submit the request form.
  You will then have to wait to get permission to use.

• National Survey of Black Americans 1979-1980, 1987-1988, 1988-1989, 1992
  Developed with input from social scientists, students, and a national advisory panel of Black scholars, the survey investigates neighborhood-community integration, services, crime and community contact, the role of religion and the church, physical and mental health, self-esteem, life satisfaction, employment, the effects of chronic unemployment, the effects of race on the job, interaction with family and friends, racial attitudes, race identity, group stereotypes, and race ideology. Demographic variables include education, marital status, income, employment status, occupation, and political behavior and affiliation.

• National Survey of Youth and Religion (NSYR)
  Nationally representative telephone survey of 3,290 English & Spanish-speaking teenagers between the ages of 13-17, and their parents. Also includes 80 oversampled Jewish households, not nationally representative, bringing the total number of completed cases to 3,370. Purpose is to research the shape & influence of religion & spirituality in the lives of American youth; to identify effective practices in the religious, moral, and social formation of the lives of youth; to describe the extent & perceived effectiveness of the programs & opportunities that religious communities are offering to their youth; and to foster an informed national discussion about the influence of religion in youth's lives, in order to encourage sustained reflection about and rethinking of our cultural and institutional practices with regard to youth & religion. The 2nd wave was designed to be a re-interview of all Wave 1 youth survey respondents. Parents of the youth respondents were not re-interviewed. At the time of the 2nd survey, respondents were between the ages of 16-21. Conducted from June 9-November 24, 2005. 2nd wave interviews were conducted only in English. Four youth respondents did not participate in the Wave 2 interview due to not being able to understand or speak English. Wave 2 covers many of the same topics as Wave 1. Many of the questions are identical. However, Wave 2 was re-designed to take into account changes in the lives of the respondents as they began to enter young adulthood. Wave 2 included new questions pertaining to behaviors occurring during the transition to adulthood, such as non-marital cohabitation, educational and career aspirations, pregnancy and marriage. In Wave 3 every attempt was made to re-interview all English-speaking Wave 1 youth survey respondents. At the time of the 3rd survey, respondents were between the ages of 18-24. Conducted from September 24, 2007-April 21, 2008. Wave 3 replicated many of the questions asked in Waves 1 & 2 with some changes made to better capture the respondents' lives as they grew older. For example, there were fewer questions on parental monitoring and more on post-high school educational aspirations.

• North American Jewish Data Bank
  Repository for demographic and other quantitative social scientific surveys about Jews in the United States and Canada. Archives the National Jewish Population Surveys as well as a number of community surveys.

• Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life
  Surveys on religion as it relates to public life.

• Religious congregations & membership in the United States 2000 : an enumeration by region, state and county based on data reported for 149 religious bodies.
  

  Citation:
  Religious congregations & membership in the United States 2000 : an enumeration by region, state and county based on data reported for 149 religious bodies. (Electronic File)
  Producer: Glenmary Research Center
  

• Social Capital Community Benchmark Survey, 2000
  Comprises both a national sample of some 3,000 respondents and community respondents in 41 communities nationwide (across 29 states) covering an additional 26,700 respondents. Measures everything from levels of giving blood, to hanging out with friends, to participating in various groups and associations, to levels of trust, to participation in group arts and group sports, to the diversity of our friendship patterns.

• Sociology of Religion: Exercises Using General Social Surveys, 1998-2000 [Instructional Materials]
  Contains the following sections, among others: (1) an exercise using General Social Surveys data to create and validate a measure of religiosity, and then to relate the measure to other social variables, (2) an exercise using General Social Surveys data to explore the relationship between religiosity and other social variables using crosstabulation, focusing on two- and three-variable relationships, and (3) an exercise using General Social Surveys data to create a measure of religious fundamentalism and to explore the relationship between this measure and various forms of religious behavior and opinions on social issues. The data contain information on the attitudes of a national probability sample of adults 18 years of age and older on a range of social and political issues. For this instructional subset, some variables were recoded and some new variables were created to facilitate analysis.

• Spirit and Power: A 10-Country Survey of Pentecostals
  Investigates the religious, political, and civic views of renewalists (i.e., Pentecostals and Charismatics) around the world. Includes surveys in 10 countries with sizeable renewalist populations: the United States; Brazil, Chile, Guatemala, Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa, India, the Philippines, and South Korea. In each country, surveys were conducted among a random sample of the general public, with an oversample of renewalists, to yield sufficient sample sizes for analysis.

• Spiritual Well-Being in the United States and Sweden, 1979
  During the 1970's, the increasing societal and scholarly recognition of the central importance of spirituality to personal and social well-being was coupled with a growing need in the social and behavioral sciences to develop tools to conceptualize and operationally measure spiritual well-being. This study was based on the assumptions that religion and spirituality overlap but are not synonyms. The primary focus of attention was upon relationships among variables in diverse populations from two national cultures.

• State of the First Amendment [1997 - 2006]
  Collects data on Americans' attitudes towards First Amendment issues, including freedom of expression and tolerance for art that may be offensive to others.

• University of Rochester/Zogby International global religion survey
  Zogby International conducted interviews of 600 people each in India (Hindu, Muslim), Peru (Roman Catholic), Russia (Russian Orthodox), Saudi Arabia (Muslim), and South Korea (Buddhist, Christian); 593 in Israel (Jewish, Muslim, Druze); and 795 in the United States (Catholic, Protestant).

• Voice of the People Series (2005+)
  Annual survey to solicit public opinion on social and political issues. Every year the survey will be conducted in approximately 50 countries, with a minimal sample size of 500 per country. Wherever possible, within each country a nationally representative sample n=500 adults, male and female, aged 18 and older will be used. In some emergent countries, where such research conditions are not possible, there may be stated variations to this (e.g. urban areas only). Similarly, in the developed world interviews will be conducted by telephone, while in emergent and under-developed countries face to face interviews will be conducted. Demographic variables include sex, age, household income, education level, employment status, and religious preference.

• World Values Survey and European Values Survey. 1981-1984, 1990-1993, 1995-1997, 1999-2005.
  Designed to enable a crossnational comparison of values and norms on a wide variety of topics and to monitor changes in values and attitudes across the globe. A variety of questions on religion and morality were included. Data is currently available for 1981-1984, 1990-1993, 1995-1997, and 1999-2005.