Ryan Burge, assistant professor of political science at Eastern Illinois University and author of “The Nones,” believes a move online is inevitable for the GSS. Burge, who often writes about religion and survey data, said most other major surveys, including those from Pew Research and the Cooperative Congressional Election Study, now have embraced online panels.
Burge believes online surveys give a more accurate view of religion in America than in-person interviews, in part because people are less likely to lie to a computer about their faith.
Being religious, he said, is still seen as a social good for many Americans. That leads to the so-called halo effect, where people overestimate how religious they are because they want to make a good impression on the surveyor.
Burge argues previous GSS surveys have undercounted the number of Americans who are considered nones — those who have no religion. The 2021 survey, he said, gave a result more in line with other surveys, showing that about 30% of Americans would be considered nones.
“People are more honest when they are looking at a web browser,” he said.
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There are losses in the move from in-person to online surveys, said Burge. There is more nuance in an in-person interview, as people can give an answer that’s not on the survey. And not everyone understands all the denominational categories on surveys, he said, and might not know where they fit in an online survey.
Hout said that while organized religion in the United States is likely to continue to decline, much of the decline is among so-called Christians and Easter Christians, who only occasionally attend services.
That has led to what he called “all or nothing” approaches to religion — where people show up all the time and believe intensely, or they give up on religion. And people remain spiritual, even if they don’t identify with a particular faith.
“Atheism is not what’s happening,” Hout said. “If we think of organized religion as a conjoined thing, the quarrel is with the organized part, not the religion.”
This article originally appeared here.
