What The Hell America!

About Pew Research Center’s Spring 2024 Global Attitudes Survey

Results for the survey are based on telephone, face-to-face and online interviews conducted under the direction of Gallup, Langer Research Associates, Social Research Centre and Verian. The results are based on national samples, unless otherwise noted. Here are more details about our international survey methodology and country-specific sample designs.

The American Trends Panel survey methodology

Results for the United States are based in part on surveys conducted on Pew Research Center’s American Trends Panel (ATP), a nationally representative panel of randomly selected U.S. adults. Panelists participate via self-administered web surveys. Panelists who did not have internet access at home were provided with a tablet and wireless internet connection. Interviews were conducted in both English and Spanish. The panel was managed by Ipsos.

Data in this report is drawn primarily from ATP Wave 143, conducted from Feb. 13 to 25, 2024. A total of 12,693 panelists responded out of 14,762 who were sampled, for a response rate of 89% (AAPOR RR3). The survey includes an oversample of 2,051 Jewish and Muslim Americans from Ipsos’ KnowledgePanel, SSRS’s Opinion Panel and NORC at the University of Chicago’s AmeriSpeak Panel. These oversampled groups are weighted to reflect their correct proportions in the population. The cumulative response rate accounting for nonresponse to the recruitment surveys and attrition is 4%. The break-off rate among panelists who logged on to the survey and completed at least one item is less than 1%. The margin of sampling error for the full sample of 12,693 respondents is plus or minus 1.5 percentage points.

Additional survey questions were asked on ATP Wave 132, conducted from July 31 to Aug. 6, 2023, among 11,201 panelists. Here is the methodology for Wave 132.

Further survey questions were asked on the Religious Landscape Study (RLS), a national cross-sectional survey conducted for Pew Research Center by NORC at the University of Chicago. It was conducted mainly online and on paper from July 17, 2023, to March 4, 2024, among a nationally representative sample of 36,908 adults. Here is the methodology for the RLS.

For information about which survey questions were asked on which U.S. survey, refer to the Topline.

ATP Panel recruitment

The ATP was created in 2014, with the first cohort of panelists invited to join the panel at the end of a large, national, landline and cellphone random-digit-dial survey that was conducted in both English and Spanish. Two additional recruitments were conducted using the same method in 2015 and 2017, respectively. Across these three surveys, a total of 19,718 adults were invited to join the ATP, of whom 9,942 (50%) agreed to participate.

In August 2018, the ATP switched from telephone to address-based sampling (ABS) recruitment. A study cover letter and a pre-incentive are mailed to a stratified, random sample of households selected from the U.S. Postal Service’s Delivery Sequence File. This Postal Service file has been estimated to cover as much as 98% of the population, although some studies suggest that the coverage could be in the low 90% range. Within each sampled household, the adult with the next birthday is asked to participate. Other details of the ABS recruitment protocol have changed over time but are available upon request.

We have recruited a national sample of U.S. adults to the ATP approximately once per year since 2014. In some years, the recruitment has included additional efforts (known as an “oversample”) to boost sample size with underrepresented groups. For example, Hispanic, Black and Asian adults were oversampled in 2019, 2022 and 2023, respectively.

Across the six address-based recruitments, a total of 23,862 adults were invited to join the ATP, of whom 20,917 agreed to join the panel and completed an initial profile survey. Of the 30,859 individuals who have ever joined the ATP, 11,920 remained active panelists and continued to receive survey invitations at the time this survey was conducted.

The American Trends Panel never uses breakout routers or chains that direct respondents to additional surveys.

Overall, 129 SSRS panelists were included in the SSRS soft launch, which began with an initial invitation on Feb. 14. And 110 NORC panelists were included in the NORC soft launch, which began with an initial invitation on Feb. 15. All remaining SSRS and NORC sampled panelists were included together in the full launch and were sent an invitation on Feb. 15.

All panelists with an email address received an email invitation and up to four email reminders if they did not respond to the survey. All ATP panelists who consented to SMS messages received an SMS invitation and up to four SMS reminders.

Data quality checks

To ensure high-quality data, the Center’s researchers performed data quality checks to identify any respondents showing clear patterns of satisficing. This includes checking whether respondents left questions blank at very high rates or always selected the first or last answer presented. As a result of this checking, six ATP respondents were removed from the survey dataset prior to weighting and analysis.

Weighting

The data was weighted in a multistep process that accounts for multiple stages of sampling and nonresponse that occur at different points in the survey process. First, each panelist begins with a base weight that reflects their probability of inclusion in the panel to which they belong. Separately for each of the four panels (ATP, KP, SSRS, NORC), the base weights for Muslim and Jewish respondents were scaled to be proportional to the group’s effective sample size. These weights were then combined and calibrated so that the overall proportions of Jewish and Muslim respondents respectively match the National Public Opinion Reference Survey (NPORS) benchmark.

This weight is then calibrated again to align with the full set of population benchmarks identified in the accompanying table (which also includes the NPORS benchmarks for the shares of Jewish and Muslim adults). To reduce the loss in precision stemming from variance in the weights, the weights were trimmed separately among Jewish, Muslim, Hispanic, non-Hispanic Black and non-Hispanic Asian respondents at the 98th percentile, and among all other respondents at the 99.5th percentile. Sampling errors and tests of statistical significance take into account the effect of weighting.

The following table shows the unweighted sample sizes and the error attributable to sampling that would be expected at the 95% level of confidence for different groups in the survey.

For questions asked on ATP Wave 143, this analysis reports the opinions of 6,712 U.S. Christians – slightly more than the 6,634 included in the previous analysis of U.S. data. This analysis also reports the opinions of 3,207 religiously unaffiliated adults in the U.S. – slightly more than the 3,205 included in the previous analysis. The sample size differences are attributable to small differences in the backcoding of religious identity questions across the two studies.

Sample sizes and sampling errors for other subgroups are available upon request. In addition to sampling error, one should bear in mind that question wording and practical difficulties in conducting surveys can introduce error or bias into the findings of opinion polls.

Dispositions and response rates

Analysis

We analyzed respondents’ attitudes based on their religious identification, how often they pray, their educational attainment and whether they live in high- or middle-income countries.

Religious identification

In each country surveyed, people were asked about their current religious identification. We then analyzed religious groups with sufficiently large sample sizes to be reliable. Respondents of other religious backgrounds were still included in the surveys, even if we were not able to analyze their religious group separately. In the U.S., for example, both ATP surveys (Waves 132 and 143) included Buddhists and Hindus, even though there were not enough respondents from these smaller groups to report on their answers separately. In the RLS, however, the survey’s larger sample size allows for separate analyses of Buddhists and Hindus, as well as Christians, Jews, Muslims and the religiously unaffiliated.

Rates of prayer

Throughout this report, we compare adults who pray daily or more often with those who pray less often. In these comparisons, the category of adults who pray less often includes those who say they never pray.

Education

To compare educational groups across countries, we standardized education levels based on the United Nations’ International Standard Classification of Education (ISCED).

High- and middle-income countries

We classified the countries in this report as being either high or middle income on the basis of categories from the World Bank that rely on per capita gross national income. This is a classification we have used in multiple other Pew Research Center analyses, including when looking at global views of China, satisfaction with democracy, globalization and national identity.