Browse 114 concepts used in the study of religion, review how survey researchers measured them in the past, and quickly compare the results of more than 7,600 survey questions.
The archive is a collection of surveys, polls, and other data submitted by the foremost scholars and research centers in the world. Review and analyze data online, or download free of charge.
Examine the religious composition, religious freedoms, demographics, constitutional clauses, survey findings and multiple social and political measures for 250 nations.
View maps of the United States and individual states for hundreds of variables, including congregational membership, census data, crime statistics and many others.
Generate congregational membership reports for any county, state and urban area in the United States using data collected by the Religious Congregations & Membership Study.
The profiles chart schisms and mergers, document membership trends, offer basic descriptions, and link to additional resources for more than 400 past and present American religious groups.
Browse dozens of topics from a major national survey of religious congregations. See how the responses vary by the size, religious family and region of the congregation.
Browse dozens of topics covered by major national surveys. See how the responses vary by demographic categories and, when available, how they change over time.
View maps of the United States and individual states for hundreds of variables, including congregational membership, census data, crime statistics and many others.
Bainbridge, W. S. (2020, May 5). Metropolitan Area Religious Ecology, 1980.
Summary
This dataset was created for the research reported in two articles by William S. Bainbridge entitled "The Religious Ecology of Deviance" in American Sociological Review and "Explaining Church Member Rate" in Social Forces. This dataset contains information about religious membership, population and deviant activity in 289 metropolitan statistical areas. The data come from the U.S. Census Bureau as well as a variety of publications on behaviors deemed "deviant."
Data File
Cases: 289
Variables: 181
Weight Variable: None
Data Collection
Date Collected: 1980
Collection Procedures
Data were assembled from publications by the U.S. Census Bureau and a number of other publications (see note).
Sampling Procedures
Because the chief theoretical focus of the original dataset was the interaction between the church member rate and various measures of new religious movement activity, the data are limited to the 289 American metropolitan areas outside New England. The available church membership data were reported by counties, and in New England the counties could not be translated directly into metropolitan areas as defined by the Census Bureau. Some variables were drawn from official reports that did not cover all 289 metropolitan areas, in many cases just concerning those with populations greater than some threshold.
William S. Bainbridge. 1989. "The Religious Ecology of Deviance."American Sociological Review 54:288-295.
William S. Bainbridge. 1990. "Explaining the Church Member Rate." Social Forces 68: 1287-1296.
Notes
Anyone planning to use the data in a scientific study should consult these two articles for examples of how the data can be used. In particular, "Explaining the Church Member Rate" has additional information on how the rates of church membership were calculated. Subsequently the dataset was expanded and used in the preparation of some sections of a book:
William Sims Bainbridge. 1997. The Sociology of Religious Movements. New York: Routledge.
