Religion_2RR – Religious Mobility

Note to the Instructor: This is the second in a series of three exercises that focus on religious mobility.  We'll develop an overall measure of religious mobility and look to see where people go when they leave their religious group.  In these exercises we're going to analyze data from the Pew 2014 Religious Landscape Survey conducted by the Pew Research Center.  We're going to use SPSS to analyze the data.  A weight variable is automatically applied to the data set so it better represents the population from which the sample was selected.  You have permission to use this exercise and to revise it to fit your needs.  Please send a copy of any revision to the author so I can see how people are using the exercises. Please contact the author for additional information.

Goal of Exercise

The goal of this exercise is to explore religious mobility.  We'll develop an overall measure of religious mobility and look to see where people go when they leave their religious group.  In the next exercise (Religion_3RR) we'll compare out-mobility for men and women and for different age categories.  Out-mobility refers to those who have left the religion in which they were raised.

Part I – The Data Set We'll be Using

The Pew Research Center has conducted a number of surveys that deal with religion.  Two of these surveys are the Religious Landscape Surveys conducted in 2007 and then repeated in 2014.  They were very large telephone surveys of about 35,000 adults in the United States.   For more information about the surveys, go to their website

We'll be using a subset of the 2014 survey in this exercise which I have named Pew_2014_Religious_Landscape_ Survey_subset_for_classes.sav.  For the purposes of these exercises I selected a subset of variables from the complete data set.  I recoded some of the variables, created a few new variables, and renamed the variables to make them easier for students to use.  There is a weight variable which should always be used so that the sample will better represent the population from which the sample was selected.  To open the data set in SPSS, just double click on the file name.[1]  Your instructor will tell you where the file is located.

Some of you have used SPSS, the statistical package we're using, and know how to get a frequency distribution.  Others of you are new to SPSS.  There is a tutorial that you can use to learn how to get a frequency distribution.  The tutorial is freely available on the Social Science Research and Instructional Center's website.  Chapter 1 of the tutorial gives you a basic overview of SPSS and crosstabulations are covered in Chapter 5. 

Part II – Developing a Measure of Religious Mobility

We'll start by looking at the relationship between the religion in which people were raised and their current religious preference.  Put the independent variable (RR3) in the columns and the dependent variable (R5) in the rows.  We're not going to need the column percents this time.  All we need is the observed counts which you get by default.  Your output should look like Figure 1.  This is a large table so we're just showing the top left part of the table.

 

Title: Figure 1 - Description:This is the SPSS output for the crosstab of RR3 and R5 showing only the observed counts.

Figure 1

The upper-left cell represents the respondents who grew up Evangelical Protestant and are still Evangelical Protestant.  In other words, they have remained in that same religious group.  There are 5,461 of them.  Moving over one column to the right we have the Mainline Protestants.  Look for the number (3,008) of Mainline Protestants who have remained Mainline Protestant.  Do this for each religious group in the table.  Fill in the appropriate number of cases in Figure 2 for all religious groups.

Now add up all these numbers.  That is the number of respondents who remained in the religious group in which they were raised.  The last thing to do is to divide the number of respondents who were not religiously mobile by the total number of cases in the table and convert that to a percent.  To get the percent that were religiously mobile, just subtract that value from 100.

 

This is the table where you will fill in the number of respondents staying in the same religious group in which they were raised.

 Figure 2

Part III – Mobility from One Religious Group to Another Religious Group

Let's look more carefully at religious mobility.  Instead of just looking at out-mobility, let's look at where people go when they leave their religion.  Be sure that you are using the column percents and that your table has RR3 in the columns and R5 in the rows.  This time you will need the column percents.  Copy by hand the column percents into Figure 3.[2] 

  Title: Figure 3 - Description:This is the table where you will fill in the percent of respondents moving from one religious group to another religious group.

What do Figures 2 and 3 tell us about religious mobility in the United States?  Figure 2 shows that a little more than 40% of all adults are religiously mobile.  That is, they have moved from one religious group to another group.  What can we learn from Figure 3?

  • When people leave their religious group, where are they most likely to go? The first eight religious categories are different types of Christians.  The last seven categories are different types of non-Christians.  How much mobility is there from Christian groups to non-Christian groups?  (Hint:  You'll have to add up percents to answer this.)
  • How much mobility is there from non-Christian groups to Christian groups?
  • The four largest Christian groups are Evangelical Protestants, Mainline Protestants, Historically Black Protestants, and Catholics.  Let's look at each of these groups separately.
    • Evangelical Protestants
      • What percent go to Mainline Protestant groups?
      • What percent go to Historically Black Protestant groups?
      • What percent go to Catholics?
      • What percent become religiously unaffiliated?
    • Mainline Protestants
      • What percent go to Evangelical Protestant groups?
      • What percent go to Historically Black Protestant groups?
      • What percent go to Catholics?
      • What percent become religiously unaffiliated?
    • Historically Black Protestants
      • What percent go to Evangelical Protestant groups?
      • What percent go to Mainline Protestant groups?
      • What percent go to Catholics?
      • What percent become religiously unaffiliated?
    • Catholics
      • What percent go to Evangelical Protestant groups?
      • What percent go to Mainline Protestant groups?
      • What percent go to Historically Black Protestant groups?
      • What percent become religiously unaffiliated?

Part IV -- Conclusions

Now let's put all this together.  Write one or two paragraphs summarizing what you learned about religious mobility.  Don't just read back the percents from above.  Rather, discuss the main conclusions that you can draw from these data.


[1] This assumes that the proper associations have been set up on your computer so the computer knows that .sav files are SPSS data files

[2] The religious groupings are abbreviated by using the first one or two letters of the religious group.  See Figure 2 for a list of these groups.