Church Attendance, Problems of Measurement, and Interpreting Indicators: A Study of Religious Practice in the United States, 1975–2010

Rossi, Maurizio; Scappini, Ettore

doi:10.1111/jssr.12115

Cited by 31 publications

(18 citation statements)

References 37 publications

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“…Italy 6 and Ireland also demonstrated statistically, but not substantively, significant rates of overreporting, as the effect sizes were negligible. Subsequent work using a more complex method for computing overreporting has supported the existence of an overreport in Italy (Rossi and Scappini 2012) and the United States (Rossi and Scappini 2014). Finally, little research exists testing the validity of self-reported religious behavior outside Europe and North America.…”

Section: Measurement Error Overreportingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Cross-National Trends in Religious Service Attendance: Table 1.

Brenner

2016

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The nature of religious change and the future of religion have been central questions of social science since its inception. But empirical research on this question has been quite American-centric, encouraged by the conventional wisdom that the United States is an outlier of religiosity in the developed world, and, more pragmatically, by the availability of survey data. The dramatic growth in the number and reach of cross-national surveys over the past two decades has offered a corrective. These data have allowed research on religious trends in the United States, Canada, and Europe, putting American trends into comparative relief. This research synthesis reviews the past quarter century of cross-national comparative survey research on religious behavior, focusing on religious service attendance as a commonly measured behavior that is arguably more equivalent across societies and cultures than other measures of religiosity. The lack of evidence for religious revival is highlighted, noting instead declining rates of attendance in the United States and Canada, and either declining rates or low "bottomed-out" stability in Western Europe, most of Eastern Europe, and Australia and New Zealand. Finally, countries in Latin America, Africa, and Asia are discussed to the extent that research allows, before a call for future research-in these places in particular-is made in order to correct for the Western and Christian focus of much of the research on cross-national religious trends.

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Section: Measurement Error Overreportingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Cross-National Trends in Religious Service Attendance: Table 1.

Brenner

2016

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“…We can now extend the study to the entire matrix by calculating the ratio P = ∑ j = 1 W ∑ i = 1 N / W x i , j / N , thereby showing the proportion between positive and possible events. We use the term measured presence to refer to the index P (Rossi and Scappini 2014). This idea is not new.…”

Section: Preliminary Features: Data and Indicatorsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Calibrating Questionnaires with Weekly Diaries: An Application in Religious Behavior, Netherlands 1975 to 2005

Scappini

2020

Sociological Methodology

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This article presents an innovative approach to improve the power of questionnaires by combining them with weekly diaries. The aim is to show how one can calibrate information collected from questionnaires, which provide a distribution that is in general biased, with diary data, which are more accurate but cannot provide a distribution across a range of frequencies. These problems become even more pronounced when the object of analysis is a specific issue, such as religious practice, the focus of this study. The suggested user-friendly model uses the more accurate diary data to adjust the distribution produced by the standard questions and enables researchers to obviate the problems of the two data collection methods. To present a practical application, the Time Budget Survey, conducted at five-year intervals between 1975 and 2005 in the Netherlands, is used.

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“…In conclusion, the TUSs are limited because of the “poverty” of the density indicator and an overestimate calculated at between 2 and 2.5 percent due to the self‐selection of the sample and the overcounting of those who attend Mass on both days. However, we believe that the level of error present in these diary‐based surveys is within acceptable limits and that they are more precise and therefore preferable to surveys that use the stylized questionnaire (Brennan and London ; Chaves , Hadaway, Marler, and Chaves ; Presser and Stinson ; Rossi and Scappini )…”

Section: The Data: Census and Tusmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The period of administration of the diary for the TUS 2003 was from October 2002 to September 2003, with a response rate of 63 percent, while the TUS 2010 was conducted from October 2009 to September 2010, with a response rate of 51 percent. These levels of response rate give an overestimate of about 1.2 percentage points in the measure of church attendance (see also Rossi and Scappini :260).…”

Section: The Data: Census and Tusmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Dynamics of Religious Practice in Spain from the Mid‐19th Century to 2010

Rossi

Scappini

2016

Scientific Study of Religion

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Like other Western countries, Spain is rapidly becoming more secularized. While there is almost unanimous agreement that this is happening, significant discord exists about the phases of the process and the speed of its development. This is mostly due to the use of partial and sometimes unreliable data. The aim of this study is to remedy these uncertainties. Our work is based on the data provided by time‐use surveys conducted in 2003 and 2010. Using some basic provisional but reasonable assumptions, we demonstrate that it is possible to identify a plausible dynamic of secularization in Spain starting in the second half of the 19th century. We also highlight the fact that the different indicators feature some significant time lags. Indeed, the dating of the start of the secularization process varies depending on whether reference is made to data on birth cohorts, the overall population, or the “visibility” of the phenomenon.

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Church Attendance, Problems of Measurement, and Interpreting Indicators: A Study of Religious Practice in the United States, 1975–2010

Cited by 31 publications

References 37 publications

Cross-National Trends in Religious Service Attendance: Table 1.

Cross-National Trends in Religious Service Attendance: Table 1.

Calibrating Questionnaires with Weekly Diaries: An Application in Religious Behavior, Netherlands 1975 to 2005

The Dynamics of Religious Practice in Spain from the Mid‐19th Century to 2010

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