Race, Class, and Culture Survey 2012

The Race, Class, and Culture Survey is a nationally-representative survey of 2,501 Americans with a focus on the role of race and class and its intersection with religion and politics, including extensive analysis of white working-class Americans. One important contribution of this project is the development of a parsimonious and replicable definition of white working class Americans. The survey highlights the significant divides among white working-class Americans along the lines of region, religion, gender, and age. Questions were asked about voting behavior, candidate favorability, the economy and inequality, view of government, perspectives on America, discrimination and diversity, and social issues (including same-sex marriage, abortion, and the environment).

Data File

Cases: 2,501
Variables: 109
Weight Variable: WEIGHT

The weighting was accomplished in two stages. The first stage of weighting corrected for different probabilities of selection associated with the number of adults in each household and each respondent's telephone usage patterns. In the second stage, sample demographics were balanced by form to match target population parameters for gender, age, education, race and Hispanic ethnicity, region (U.S. Census definitions), population density and telephone usage. The population density parameter was derived from Census 2000 data. The telephone usage parameter came from an analysis of the July-December 2011 National Health Interview Survey. All other weighting parameters were derived from an analysis of the Census Bureau's 2011 Annual Social and Economic Supplement (ASEC) data.

Data Collection

Date Collected: August 2, 2012 through August 15, 2012

Funded By

Bend the Arc Foundation and the Nathan Cummings Foundation

Collection Procedures

Results of the survey were based on bilingual (Spanish and English) telephone interviews conducted between August 2, 2012 and August 15, 2012, by professional interviewers under the supervision of Directions in Research. Interviews were conducted by telephone among a random sample of 2,501 adults 18 years of age or older in the continental United States (1,000 respondents were interviewed on a cell phone). The landline and cell phone samples were provided by Survey Sampling International and the final sample was weighted to ensure proper representativeness.

Sampling Procedures

The sample weighting was accomplished using Sample Balancing, a special iterative sample-weighting program that simultaneously balances the distributions of all variables. Weights were trimmed to prevent individual interviews from having too much influence on the final results. The use of these weights in statistical analysis ensures that the demographic characteristics of the sample closely approximate the demographic characteristics of the target populations.

Principal Investigators

Robert P. Jones and Daniel Cox

Related Publications

Click here for a summary of the Public Religion Research Institute's findings of this survey.