American Religious Identification Survey (2001)

INTRODUCTION

The 2001 American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS 2001) was designed to replicate, as closely as possible, the methodology used for the 1990 National Survey of Religious Identification (NSRI) which took place under the auspices of the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. Wherever appropriate, reference will be made to the similarities and differences between ARIS and the effort of ten years earlier.

In total, over 50,000 respondents were interviewed over a span of approximately four (4) months.  The sample was based on a series of national RDD (random digit dialing) surveys conducted through ICR – International Communications Research as part of the EXCEL and ACCESS national telephone omnibus services.  The data from each of the approximately fifty (50) independent surveys were aggregated and weighted to reflect current estimates of the US adult population by age, gender, race/ethnicity, education and geographic components of the 48 contiguous States.

As the reader will note, the data resulting from the survey instruments can be examined within the context of households or individual members (population) or both.  Consequently, the data sets contain weighting factors developed for each unit of analysis and for making projections to each on a national or other basis.