Conrad Hackett

Hindus and Jews are much more likely to have a four-year college degree than Americans in other religious groups, according to Pew Research Center’s 2023-24 Religious Landscape Study (RLS). Seven-in-ten Hindus and 65% of Jews have a bachelor’s degree or more education. That compares with 35% of U.S. adults overall. On the other end of the spectrum, lower shares of evangelical Protestants (29%) and members of historically Black Protestant denominations (24%) hold college degrees. The shares of college graduates for several other religious groups range from 35% to 45%.

American adults with a four-year college degree
Hindus 70%
Episcopalians 67%
Jews 65%
Agnostics 53%
Atheists 48%
Muslims 44%
Buddhists 41%
Catholics 35%
National average 35%
Evangelicals 29%
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2026/02/19/which-us-religious-groups-are-most-highly-educated/

This story cites findings from 5 different opt-in polls www.the-independent.com/life-style/b...

Young adult findings:
Age group most likely to regularly read the Bible
Doubled belief in God in two years
80% believe in astrology
Number of churchgoers quadrupled
25% expect to fail in life

This story cites findings from 5 different opt-in polls www.the-independent.com/life-style/b...

Young adult findings:
Age group most likely to regularly read the Bible
Doubled belief in God in two years
80% believe in astrology
Number of churchgoers quadrupled
25% expect to fail in life

Godless Polemics: Atheist Pamphleteering and the Specter of Emancipation in the United States Godless Polemics examines the role of pamphleteering as a medium for radical critique in the intellectual and cultural history of American atheism, focusing on its function as oppositional and counter...

Succinct and a very interesting open access book on atheist pamphleteering in the United States: "Godless Polemics" (2026) by Florian Zappe. www.routledge.com/Godless-Pole...

We talk a lot about “media literacy” — but do people actually experience checking the news as a skill they’ve mastered?

What people describe instead often sounds like a stream of everyday judgments, made under uncertainty.

That gap feels worth paying attention to.

Survey Associate, Methodology Pew Research Center Organization Overview Pew Research Center is a nonpartisan fact tank that informs the public about the issues, attitudes and trends shaping America and the world. It conducts publi...

Exciting news! We just posted an opening for a Survey Associate on @pewresearch.org's Methods team! This is an amazing opportunity for someone relatively early in their career to join what is, IMO, the most fun methods team in the business. Full description at the link below.

Bar chart showing that a majority of teens in the United States say students at their school use AI chatbots to cheat on their schoolwork at least sometimes. The chart is based on a September/October 2025 Pew Research Center survey of U.S. teens.

59% of teens in the US say students at their school use AI chatbots to cheat on their schoolwork extremely often, very often or somewhat often. www.pewresearch.org/internet/202...

Online opt-in surveys also find recent religious resurgence among U.S. young adults While this analysis focuses on claims of religious revival among young adults in the U.K., some opt-in surveys have pointed to a similar trend in the United States. Barna Group, a research organization serving Christian leaders, has used online opt-in survey data to make claims of rising churchgoing among young adults in the U.S. According to Barna, “Since 2019, both Gen Z and Millennials were the least likely generation to frequently attend church. Today, they are the most engaged.” However, surveys from Pew Research Center using random samples show no clear evidence of a religious revival among young adults. Nor is there clear evidence of religious revival in two other surveys based on random samples conducted by other organizations: the General Social Survey and the American Time Use Survey.

Is there a revival of churchgoing among US young adults? According to
Opt-in online polls: Yes
Surveys using random samples of the population: No
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2026/01/23/has-there-been-a-christian-revival-among-young-adults-in-the-uk-recent-surveys-may-be-misleading/

What examples come to mind for you?

It would be a great story for the Onion.

That is bizarre. I assume you're not seeing this pattern from 77% of young resident candidates.

Try to beat this fortune.com/2025/08/14/g...

To be clear, I am NOT suggesting churchgoing patterns have been intentionally manipulated in surveys of opt-in online survey panels. Rather, this may be the unintentional consequence of bogus respondents taking surveys quickly and inflating the incidence of a rare behavior (young adult churchgoing).

Why survey results based on opt-in samples differ from random samples Online opt-in surveys do not randomly recruit respondents. Rather, respondents are recruited through methods such as online advertising, self-enrollment and email lists. Survey firms try to make these samples reflect the general population by matching quotas for various characteristics or via statistical modeling. However, results from these surveys may be biased by “bogus respondents” who, instead of answering survey questions honestly, answer with the minimal effort required to complete surveys quickly and receive monetary rewards. Recently, political scientist Sean Westwood demonstrated that large language models can be easily programmed to take opt-in surveys, even using multiple personas that evade fraud detection methods employed by survey vendors. He describes this as an “existential threat” to the validity of results from online opt-in surveys. Pew Research Center studies have found that online opt-in surveys may produce especially misleading results for young adults. For example, a widely reported online opt-in poll finding about Holocaust denial among young Americans did not replicate when the Center included the measure in our American Trends Panel, which recruits a random sample of participants via mail. A Center study found that young, online opt-in respondents are much more likely to answer “Yes” in Yes/No questions, regardless of the truth. And another found 12% of young online, opt-in respondents claiming they are licensed to pilot a nuclear submarine (versus 1% of those ages 65 and older).

Online opt-in surveys also find recent religious resurgence among U.S. young adults While this analysis focuses on claims of religious revival among young adults in the U.K., some opt-in surveys have pointed to a similar trend in the United States. Barna Group, a research organization serving Christian leaders, has used online opt-in survey data to make claims of rising churchgoing among young adults in the U.S. According to Barna, “Since 2019, both Gen Z and Millennials were the least likely generation to frequently attend church. Today, they are the most engaged.” However, surveys from Pew Research Center using random samples show no clear evidence of a religious revival among young adults. Nor is there clear evidence of religious revival in two other surveys based on random samples conducted by other organizations: the General Social Survey and the American Time Use Survey.

Is there a revival of churchgoing among US young adults? According to
Opt-in online polls: Yes
Surveys using random samples of the population: No
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2026/01/23/has-there-been-a-christian-revival-among-young-adults-in-the-uk-recent-surveys-may-be-misleading/

In 173 countries and territories, at least 90% of the population falls into just two of the seven religious categories we analyzed, sometimes resulting in a fairly even split. We calculated a “religious divide” score for each place to analyze just how evenly these populations are divided. Among the 10 countries with the most evenly divided religious composition, six have a Christian-Muslim split. In the remaining four, the split is between Christians and the unaffiliated (Uruguay and Estonia) or between Buddhists and the unaffiliated (Mongolia and Japan).

Where the population falls most evenly into a pair of religious categories
1 Eritrea
2 Nigeria
3 Bosnia & Herz.
4 Uruguay
5 Estonia
6 Chad
7 Ivory Coast
8 Ethiopia
9 Mongolia
10 Japan
https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2026/02/12/religious-diversity-around-the-world/

Yes!

We welcome proposals from researchers around the world at all career stages, including doctoral students. Solo and joint applications are possible. If we choose a proposal submitted by multiple co-authors, the payment will be split evenly between all joint applicants.

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Home Survey Experiments for the Scientific Study of Religion (SESSR) aims to improve our understanding of the measurement, impacts, and causes of religion, spirituality, and related concepts. SESSR accept...

Here's a great opportunity to conduct religion-related research at no cost on a high-quality survey panel (it uses random sampling to invite respondents).

One year after data is given to researchers, it will be made publicly available for further analysis.
www.sessr.org/home 🧪

Surveys that find British young adults have high levels of Christian belief & practice have two things in common:
1. They survey opt-in panels that accept volunteers.
2. They don't make the underlying survey datasets publicly available for researchers to analyze.

Why we revised our estimates for 2010 Read how Pew Research Center revised our estimates to reflect methodological advances, incorporate newly available data, and allow comparison across measures in this report.

Please see www.pewresearch.org/religion/202...

Seven things to consider when measuring religious identity Measuring religious identity is complex. The author offers seven suggestions for those who wish to describe and understand religious identity using survey data: (1) Definitions and measures of reli...

I've written about this in many places. Here's another www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1...

Our intent is capture everyone who would choose a given religious identity. Other survey questions can measure different beliefs/behaviors for distinguishing between more & less religiously active.

How Measurement Changes Can Exaggerate the Growth of Religious “Nones” Article: How Measurement Changes Can Exaggerate the Growth of Religious “Nones” | Sociological Science | Posted February 3, 2026

In our global work, our preferred type of question is a direct, one step, "What is your religion, if any?" question. The advantage of such a measure is that it is the type of measure collected in the greatest number of countries, maximizing cross-national comparability.

One week left to apply!

Andrew discusses this challenge in the video.

In the years since the video was made, it's become more clear that the problem you can't solve with weights and models is the bogus respondents who pollute nonprobability data.

Methodology This section describes the methods used to estimate religious composition at the country level, regionally and globally; our procedures for measuring

You are correct that Estonia's census yields different results than other sources. We rely on ISSP survey data for our estimates.

The census uses a two step approach to measure those who feel an affiliation with a religion. And quite a few people don't answer the census Q.

See our methodology:

“Nonprobability” or “opt-in” surveys are generally easier and cheaper for polling organizations to conduct. But are they accurate? Our third Methods 101 vide... Methods 101: What are nonprobability surveys?

One of the problems with online, opt-in polls (aka "nonprobability polls") is that the people who self-enroll in online panels may not be representative of the public. Courtney Kennedy & Andrew Mercer explain in this 2018 video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T9dmq6Lwh24&t=61s

It's the most religiously unaffiliated country in the Americas.

In 173 countries and territories, at least 90% of the population falls into just two of the seven religious categories we analyzed, sometimes resulting in a fairly even split. We calculated a “religious divide” score for each place to analyze just how evenly these populations are divided. Among the 10 countries with the most evenly divided religious composition, six have a Christian-Muslim split. In the remaining four, the split is between Christians and the unaffiliated (Uruguay and Estonia) or between Buddhists and the unaffiliated (Mongolia and Japan).

Where the population falls most evenly into a pair of religious categories
1 Eritrea
2 Nigeria
3 Bosnia & Herz.
4 Uruguay
5 Estonia
6 Chad
7 Ivory Coast
8 Ethiopia
9 Mongolia
10 Japan
https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2026/02/12/religious-diversity-around-the-world/

Please see methodology. This was an open-ended question.