Das International Social Survey Programme (ISSP) erhebt jährlich Umfragedaten zu sozialwissenschaftlich relevanten Themen. Der vorliegende ISSP Data Report – Religious Attitudes and Religious Change beruht auf ISSP-Daten, die zu drei verschiedenen Zeitpunkten innerhalb von 17 Jahren in bis zu 42 Mitgliedsländern zu Einstellungen gegenüber Kirche und Religion im weitesten Sinne gesammelt wurden. Jedes Kapitel wurde von unterschiedlichen Autoren der ISSP-Gemeinschaft geschrieben und beleuchtet mit Hilfe der ISSP-Daten spezielle Aspekte religiöser Einstellungen und religiösen Wandels im internationalen Vergleich. In der Gesamtschau ergeben sich sowohl Einblicke in das religiöse Leben verschiedener Länder, als auch insbesondere Erkenntnisse zu den Einflussfaktoren religiösen Wandels innerhalb von fast zwei Dekaden. The annual survey of the International Social Survey Programme (ISSP) provides data on topics relevant in social research. This current ISSP Data Report – Religious Attitudes and Religious Change examines data collected at three different points over 17 years, from up to 42 ISSP member countries, covering various facets of respondents’ attitudes towards Church and Religion. Individual chapters were written by different members of the ISSP community thereby offering a cross-national, comparative perspective on particular aspects of religious attitudes and religious change via ISSP data. Overall, this report offers insights into the religious landscapes of various countries and in particular information about the factors influencing the process of religious change over the past two decades. Schriftenreihe Band 13 ISSP Data Report Religious Attitudes and Religious Change ISSP Data Report Insa Bechert and Markus Quandt (eds.) ISBN 978-3-86819-022-9 Schriftenreihe ISSN 1869-2869 19,- EUR Band 13 ISSP Data Report: Religious Attitudes and Religious Change GESIS Series published by GESIS – Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences Volume 13 edited by Insa Bechert and Markus Quandt ISSP Data Report Religious Attitudes and Religious Change Insa Bechert and Markus Quandt (eds.) ISSP Data Report Religious Attitudes and Religious Change GESIS – Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences 2013 Bibliographical information of the German National Library (DNB) The German National Library lists this publication in the German National Bibliography; detailed bibliographical data are available via http://dnb.ddb.de. ISBN 978-3-86819-022-9 ISSN 1869-2869 Publisher, printing and distribution: GESIS – Leibniz-Institut für Sozialwissenschaften Unter Sachsenhausen 6-8, 50667 Köln, Tel.: 0221 / 476 94 - 0 [email protected] Printed in Germany ©2013 GESIS – Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences, Cologne. All rights reserved. In particular the transfer to machine-readable form and the storage in information systems – even in excerpts – may be done only with the written permission of GESIS. Content Introduction ...................................................... 7 Authors ......................................................... 11 Beliefs about God across Time and Countries Tom W. Smith ..................................................... 13 Understanding Variation in Religious Beliefs 1991-2008 The Impact of Modernization and Social Inequality Jonas Edlund ...................................................... 29 Trends in Church Attendance Among Christian Societies in the Second Half of the 20th Century Franz Höllinger .................................................... 47 Are Religious People Happier than Non-Religious People? Insa Bechert ...................................................... 59 Do Modernization and Religious Competition Affect Religious Change? An Exploratory Analysis of the ISSP Modules 1991, 1998 and 2008 Wolfgang Jagodzinski ............................................... 73 Assessing Trends in Religiosity with ISSP Data: An Addendum Markus Quandt and Insa Bechert ...................................... 89 Appendix A.I Correspondence List of Cumulated Variables and Replications . 99 A.II Guide for the ISSP “Religion” Cumulation of the Years 1991, 1998 and 2008 (ZA5070 and ZA5071) . 107 A.III 2008 Religion Questionnaire . 113 A.IV ZACAT . 133 A.V ISSP Modules . 137 A.VI ISSP Members and Participation .............................. 139 Introduction The International Social Survey Programme (ISSP) is a coordinated effort encompassing research institutes from currently 48 countries around the world. ISSP annual surveys are designed to cover a variety of topics highly relevant to social science research and the data obtained is in high demand among the social sciences research community. The ISSP Data Report series represents an attempt to reach out to an audience beyond this traditional group of ISSP data users. Data Reports are designed to establish an under- standing of the research value of ISSP data among social scientists at large, as well as among external users from other research areas, including students. The first ISSP Data Report – Attitudes towards the Role of Government was published in 2010 in the GESIS Schriftenreihe (GESIS Scientific Series) and was based on data obtained from the four ISSP modules 1985, 1990, 1996, and 2006. This second volume of the ISSP Data Report focusing on Religious Attitudes and Religious Change is based on the three modules on Religion dating from 1991, 1998, and 2008. Six authors, all closely connected to the ISSP, wrote chapters on religion- related topics for this volume, with most of them based on ISSP data covering a time span of almost 20 years. Tom W. Smith authored the first chapter in which he depicts and explains general trends of personal belief in God. As belief in God is one of the most general measures of religiosity available, Smith’s analyses draw a good basic picture of the overall ‘religious landscape’ across ISSP member countries. The second chapter offers Jonas Edlund’s examination of the extent to which cross-national variation in religious faith can be explained by a country’s level of social inequality. In Chapter 3 Franz Höl- linger presents and interprets the development of church attendance from the middle of the 20th century to the present. He provides a look at trends in church attendance in Christian societies against the background of decreasing church attendance among many Western societies; usually read as an indication of the decreasing relevance of religion in everyday life. Insa Bechert’s contribution in Chapter 4 aims to shed light on the issue of whether religious people are happier than non-religious people. In the fifth chapter Wolfgang Jagodzinski addresses the question to what extent the societal processes of modernisation or of religious competition can explain the different trends in religiosity that the data display for different countries. These five chapters are followed by a metho- dological note by the editors that examines a different set of cumulated data: the ISSP standard background variable “church attendance” in a timeline covering the 25 years between 1985 and 2010 across the six countries participating in the ISSP from the very beginning: Australia, Austria, Germany, Great Britain, Italy and the USA.1 In the five chapters of this report for all of the analyses that compare points in time, a cumulated dataset was used (GESIS Data Archive identification number: ZA5070, doi:10.4232/1.10860). This dataset joins the individual datasets of the ISSP modules 1 The editors would like to thank Thomas Rahlf from the GESIS Data Archive for the Social Sciences for his great help with the graphical illustrations. GESIS Series | Volume 13 7 Introduction from 1991, 1998, and 2008; and allows for very convenient comparisons across these three modules. It contains only those country samples, and only those variables of the original datasets, which occur in at least two of the three individual modules, and which could be sufficiently harmonised to make valid comparisons. Thus, it collects data from 28 different countries.2 The list of cumulated variables can be found in Appendix A.I; further information on the cumulated data file is offered by a guideline document in Appendix A.II. The individual datasets of ISSP 1991 (ZA2150), ISSP 1998 (ZA3190) and 2008 (ZA4950) have been used in different chapters as well, reporting results from up to 42 countries surveyed on this module topic. The countries‘ participation in the Religion modules is illustrated in the map on the following page. For a comprehensive overview of ISSP member countries and module participation see Appendix A.VI. The full list of topical modules is given in Appendix A.V. There is a basic ISSP rule which has been followed over the series of all ISSP modules that at least two thirds of the module questions are repeated from the previous instance of the same topical module, while the remaining questions may be replaced or changed. Such changes can either be methodological adjustments, or they can address entirely new topical areas under the respective module heading. Also for 2008 several new items were included, focusing on issues such as tolerance towards other religions and mem- bers of other religions. The complete basic questionnaire for ISSP 2008 is published in Appendix A.III. Access to the data and methodological information on all the data used here is availa- ble free of charge through the GESIS website at http://www.gesis.org/issp. The online portal of the GESIS Data Archive, ZACAT, allows for online analysis and downloading of the data, at http://zacat.gesis.org. More