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American Religious Identification Survey
APPENDIX
DEMOGRAPHICS
The respondent in this survey was a randomly chosen (based on last birthday) adult 18 years or older. In addition, the survey inquired about twenty other characteristics of persons and households, enabling us to develop a fairly nuanced demographic profile of each religious group. Those questions included the following:
For Respondent
1.Age 5.Race/ Hispanic origin/Jewish origin
2.Marital status 6.Political party affiliation
3.Employment status 7.Sex
4.Level of education 8.Head of household or not
9.Registered voter
For Household
10. Own or rent home 15.Number & sex of children (0-6)
11. Total number living in household 16.Total household income
12. Number & sex of adults 18+ 17.Number of telephones
13. Number & sex of children 12-17 18.Metro/rural status
14. Number & sex of children 6-11 19.State
20.U.S. region
POPULATION ESTIMATES
In order to accurately reflect a true statistical portrait of the United States the raw survey data are weighted by ICR Survey Research Group using the latest Census Bureau statistics, to reflect the known composition of U.S. households and the total population. The weighting that is incorporated into each record takes into account the disproportionate probabilities of household projection due to the number of separate telephone lines and the probability associated with the random selection of an individual household member. Following application of the above weights, the sample is post-stratified and balanced by key demographics such as age, sex, region and education. However, weighting cannot compensate for characteristics that are neither geographic nor demographic in nature. The most obvious is an inability to communicate in English. This means there may be a tendency to underestimate some of the smaller religious groups that contain a high proportion of recent immigrants. Nevertheless, the range of error will not be very large even in these cases. The sampling error in the survey is 0.5% for the overall sample of 50,000 and 1% for the sub-sample of 17,000.
Another way to express the power of the results is to look at confidence intervals within religious groups. At the 95% confidence level (i.e. that results will fall within the stated range in 95 samples out of 100 sample drawn from the population) the percentage of adult Catholics who are women is 54% +/- 0.5% -- namely between 53.5% - 54.5%.
QUESTIONS PERTAINING TO RELIGION, ETHNICITY,
RELIGION IN THE FAMILY AND TECHNOLOGY
Religious Affiliation and switching
Three questions were introduced to assess the extent of religious switching among different segments of the American adult population.
1. Household membership of a church, temple synagogue or mosque.
2. Change of religious preference by respondent
3. Current and previous religious preference
Secularism
A series of questions were introduced to determine the nature and extent of basic religious faith among the adherents of various religious groups.
Questions:
1. A religious- secular outlook self-grading by the respondent
2. A battery of three agree/disagree questions on the Divine.
Inter-faith Families
ARIS 2000 constitutes the first national survey that has probed the extent to which American households are divided by religion (i.e. spouses do not profess the same religious identification).
Questions:
1. Religion of both spouses recorded.
2. Year of marriage
3. Religion in which raising/will raise children
Hispanics
Given the significant growth in America's Hispanic population, ARIS 2001 is the
first to probe on a survey basis the religious proclivities and affiliations of this large
and growing minority.
Questions: (to be associated with religious items)
1. Country of birth (incl. Puerto Rico).
2. Year of entry to US if foreign-born.
Communications Technology
Finally, in light of the communications revolution of the past decade, ARIS 2001
probes the extent of utilization of the new media among different religious groups.
Questions:
1. Use of Cable/satellite/PPV.
2. Use of PC/Internet
3. Use of audio equipment
4. Use of VCR/ Laser discs
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