This project was designed to provide a profile of graduate programs in ministry throughout the United States and to offer practical information for directors and administrators of these programs to use for their long- and short-range planning.

No church is entirely satisfied with the level of financial support that it receives from its members. For this reason, the Lilly Endowment commissioned a nation-wide study of giving in U.S. churches, which came to be known as the American Congregational Giving Study. One aspect was a five denomination study which included: Assemblies of God, Southern Baptist Convention, Roman Catholic Church, Evangelical Lutheran Church of America and the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A). A total of 125 congregations from each denomination were studied. The congregations were chosen from nine sampling regions, one in each of the nine U.S. census regions. Field workers personally visited each congregation in the sample. They had two tasks. First, they assisted the pastor in the completion of a Congregational Profile, which summarized the major socioeconomic characteristics, beliefs, programs and finances of the congregation. Second, they selected a random sample of 30 congregation members. Each of these was sent a Lay Questionnaire, which asked members about their personal religious beliefs, opinions about both their congregation and denomination and their personal socioeconomic characteristics. The data were collected into two separate data files, one containing the congregational profiles (ACGSCONG) and the other containing the responses from the member questionnaires (ACGSMBRS). The data from each congregational profile and that congregation's member questionnaires are easily merged through their common congregational id (Variable name CONGID).

No church is entirely satisfied with the level of financial support that it receives from its members. For this reason, the Lilly Endowment commissioned a nation-wide study of giving in U.S. churches, which came to be known as the American Congregational Giving Study. One aspect was a five denomination study of church members which included: Assemblies of God, Southern Baptist Convention, Roman Catholic Church, Evangelical Lutheran Church of America and the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).A total of 30 households from each of the 125 congregations were studied.

The congregations were chosen from nine sampling regions, one in each of the nine U.S. census regions. Field workers personally visited each congregation in the sample. They had two tasks. First, they assisted the pastor in the completion of a Congregational Profile, which summarized the major socioeconomic characteristics, beliefs, programs and finances of the congregation. Second, they selected a random sample of 30 congregation members. Each of these was sent a Lay Questionnaire, which asked members about their personal religious beliefs, opinions about both their congregation and denomination and their personal socioeconomic characteristics. The data were collected into two separate data files, one containing the congregational profiles (ACGSCONG) and the other containing the responses from the member questionnaires (ACGSMBRS). The data from each congregational profile and that congregation's member questionnaires are easily merged through their common congregational id (Variable name CONGID).

The Southern Baptist Convention Annual Church Profile (ACP) seeks to preserve Southern Baptist history while collecting data on the ministries occurring in Southern Baptist churches. Another goal of the ACP is to allow individual Southern Baptist churches to examine their own progress of ministry and growth. Church clerks for Southern Baptist churches compile information, including church membership, Sunday school, discipleship, finances and mission data. This data file focuses on the ACP's Sunday school reports for 1980.

The Southern Baptist Convention Annual Church Profile (ACP) seeks to preserve Southern Baptist history while collecting data on the ministries occurring in Southern Baptist churches. Another goal of the ACP is to allow individual Southern Baptist churches to examine their own progress of ministry and growth. Church clerks for Southern Baptist churches compile information, including church membership, Sunday school, discipleship, finances and mission data. This data file focuses on the ACP's Sunday school reports for 1985.

The Southern Baptist Convention Annual Church Profile (ACP) seeks to preserve Southern Baptist history while collecting data on the ministries occurring in Southern Baptist churches. Another goal of the ACP is to allow individual Southern Baptist churches to examine their own progress of ministry and growth. Church clerks for Southern Baptist churches compile information, including church membership, Sunday school, discipleship, finances, and mission data. This data file focuses on the ACP's Sunday school reports for 1990.

The Southern Baptist Convention Annual Church Profile (ACP) seeks to preserve Southern Baptist history while collecting data on the ministries occurring in Southern Baptist churches. Another goal of the ACP is to allow individual Southern Baptist churches to examine their own progress of ministry and growth. Church clerks for Southern Baptist churches compile information, including church membership, Sunday school, discipleship, finances, and mission data. This data file focuses on the ACP's Sunday school reports for 1995.

This is the report of the local church to the District Assembly and covers the activities of the church and its auxiliary organizations. Response by pastors makes possible the accurate study of the efforts of the ministries occurring in Nazarene churches. Data gathered on the Annual Report of the Pastor are important to some agency of the church and are significant to the statistical history of the Church of the Nazarene.

This is the report of the local church to the District Assembly and covers the activities of the church and its auxiliary organizations. Response by pastors makes possible the accurate study of the efforts of the ministries occurring in Nazarene churches. Data gathered on the Annual Report of the Pastor are important to some agency of the church and are significant to the statistical history of the Church of the Nazarene.

This is the report of the local church to the District Assembly and covers the activities of the church and its auxiliary organizations. Response by pastors makes possible the accurate study of the efforts of the ministries occurring in Nazarene churches. Data gathered on the Annual Report of the Pastor are important to some agency of the church and are significant to the statistical history of the Church of the Nazarene.

This is the report of the local church to the District Assembly and covers the activities of the church and its auxiliary organizations. Response by pastors makes possible the accurate study of the efforts of the ministries occurring in Nazarene churches. Data gathered on the Annual Report of the Pastor are important to some agency of the church and are significant to the statistical history of the Church of the Nazarene.

The 1993 Edition "From Belief to Commitment" offers the following description of the project summary.

In 1992, INDEPENDENT SECTOR conducted a national survey of the activities and finances of religious congregations in order to provide information about religious organizations as part of a larger national survey of the activities and finances of private, nonprofit, charitable organizations in the United States. This survey was also designed to update a larger survey of the activities and finances of congregations conducted in 1987. The purpose of these surveys is to provide information about an important set of institutions and their impact on the quality of life in their communities and on individual giving and volunteering more generally. . . Specific objectives of the survey were to find answers to the following questions:
1. What are the size and membership composition of congregations?
2. Where are the congregations located by region of the country and by urban, suburban, or rural areas?
3. What are the congregations' programs in religion, education, health, human services, international activities, community development, civil rights, arts and culture, and the environment?
4. What are the total revenues of the congregations, and what proportions of these revenues come from individual giving or other sources of funds?
5. What are the expenditures of congregations? How much money do they spend on operations and programs, and how much do they use for other purposes?
6. How many people from the congregation volunteer to perform various activities, and how many hours per month do they volunteer?
7. How many programs, such as services to the elderly, do congregations operate directly, and how many programs do they support indirectly through contributions or through the voluntary service of members of the congregation?

With these questions we hoped to gain an initial understanding of the range of activities of congregations and their participation in the larger community. We also wanted to estimate nationally the size, scope, source and purpose of revenues and expenditures of congregations, and the ways these activities and expenditures relate to total philanthropy in the United States (p. xi-xii).

Representatives of diocesan offices were surveyed in 1994 to assess the state of family life ministry and to draw up a profile of diocesan offices that offer services and programs for marriage and family life. This survey was similar to a survey of diocesan offices conducted in 1991 and was used to update the profile and to measure any changes in services and programs. The attached data file provides the results of the 1994 survey.

During the last several decades, two opposing trends have been taking place. On the one hand, there has been growth in the Jewish day school movement. On the other, there has been a serious decline in Jewish supplementary school enrollment and a defection from Jewish life of growing numbers of Jews. These two opposing trends give rise to several questions including: What happens when intensive and extensive Jewish education confronts a world full of secular, intermixing and challenging modalities? What role does a Jewish day school experience play in Jewish continuity of its exponents?

This study seeks to assess the impact of Jewish all-day education. Questions such as the following are addressed: What kind of Jewish behavior do young adults who attend Jewish day schools exhibit? Do those who attended for longer periods of time demonstrate higher levels of Jewish observance and involvement? Is Jewish behavior of day school graduates related to things such as home background, Jewish camp experience, Israel visitation or study in Israel? What are the marriage patterns of graduates? Does a college education reduce the possibility that Jewish day school graduates will remain practicing Jews? In short, what is the Jewishness quotient of Jewish day school graduates who are at risk of losing their Jewish identity because of the lure of contemporary society?

The National Congregations Study (NCS) "dataset fills a void in the sociological study of congregations by providing, for the first time, data that can be used to draw a nationally aggregate picture of congregations" (Chaves et al. 1999, p.460). Thanks to innovations in sampling techniques, the NCS data is the first nationally representative sample of American congregations. Manuscripts using this data file or codebook should contain the following citation: Chaves, Mark. 1998. National Congregations Study. Data File and Codebook. Tucson, Arizona: University of Arizona, Department of Sociology.

The purpose of the Pulpit & Pew survey , undertaken for the researchers by the National Opinion Research Center, was to take stock of U.S. pastoral leadership: Who are they? What is their core work? How has it changed over time? How are they faring? The researchers were also concerned with social and cultural trends affecting pastoral leadership, and attempted to ask, normatively, what excellent pastoral leadership entails and how it can be nurtured and supported. The focus was on the universe of senior or solo pastors of congregations from all Christian denominations as well as pastors of independent churches. Non-Christian religious leaders were also sampled. The researchers did not survey associate or assistant pastors, clergy who serve in various non-congregational ministries, and retired clergy who are no longer serving congregations. The survey data were supplemented by focus group interviews in seven sites across the U.S.

Beginning in the 1980s claims of “Satanic ritual abuse” received considerable attention in the popular media. Ritual abuse survivors claim to have been physically and sexually molested by secretive, underground groups of Satanists. Many ritual abuse survivors further claim that Satanists have the ability to erase memories of their abuse. Hence, survivors often attempt to recover “repressed” memories of ritual abuse with the help of therapists. With the spread of ritual abuse claims in the 1990s, dozens of therapists began to specialize in the subject.

In 1994 the principal investigator conducted an anonymous survey of ritual abuse survivors. In addition to questions about the survivors’ abuse history, the survey included items designed to reproduce Bennett’s Past Month Isolation Scale (PMI) and the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale (CESD). A set of demographic questions asked respondents about their gender, age, occupation, income, education, race and marital status.

Ritual abuse survivors are difficult to survey. A common theme in the therapeutic literature about ritual abuse is the constant danger posed by the Satanic cults that survivors claim to have escaped. The ritual abuse literature reports that Satanists will use “triggers” to lure the survivor back into the cult, or may try to kill the survivor should his or her memories threaten the group. Thus, survivors and their therapists display considerable reticence about talking to outsiders regarding their claimed experiences. To our knowledge this release represents the first publicly available data on this controversial movement.

The Religion in Urban America Program (RUAP) conducts research in metropolitan Chicago concerning the diverse ways religious organizations of all faiths serve urban people and address urban issues. The heart of the study is an empirical examination of religious and religiously affiliated organizations in metropolitan Chicago. We have conducted case studies of some 75 congregations and numerous other organizations--denominational, ecumenical, and interfaith agencies, religiously based community organizations, and special-purpose groups. Using ethnography as the principal research method, which includes on-site observations and interviews, we attempt to understand and interpret each organization on its own terms and with attention to those features and purposes considered most important by its leaders and constituencies. The Survey of Congregations in Metropolitan Chicago was conducted for the sole purpose of providing information to assist us in selecting congregations to serve as ethnographic case studies.

This survey was conducted to supplement the research on congregations being conducted by the Religion in Urban America Program. The primary concern was to learn whether and to what extent religious, social service and community organizations related to and extended the work of churches. That is, whether they bridged geographic and/or social boundaries and whether there was a difference between religious and secular organizations with respect to the bridging function.

The aim of this project was to develop a dataset describing the U.S. Catholic Church at the diocesan level. The total project consists of six decades' worth of data, from 1940 through 1990. Diocesan information collected from Church and other sources were merged with U.S. Census data describing population and other characteristics of the counties that make up each diocese.

The aim of this project was to develop a dataset describing the U.S. Catholic Church at the diocesan level. The total project consists of six decades' worth of data, from 1940 through 1990. Diocesan information collected from churches and other sources were merged with U.S. Census data describing population and other characteristics of the counties that make up each diocese.

The aim of this project was to develop a dataset describing the U.S. Catholic Church at the diocesan level. The total project consists of six decades' worth of data, from 1940 through 1990. Diocesan information collected from Church and other sources was merged with U.S. Census data describing population and other characteristics of the counties that make up each diocese.

The aim of this project was to develop a dataset describing the U.S. Catholic Church at the diocesan level. The total project consists of six decades' worth of data, from 1940 through 1990. Diocesan information collected from Church and other sources was merged with U.S. Census data describing population and other characteristics of the counties that make up each diocese.

The aim of this project was to develop a dataset describing the U.S. Catholic Church at the diocesan level. The total project consists of six decades' worth of data, from 1940 through 1990. Diocesan information collected from Church and other sources were merged with U.S. Census data describing population and other characteristics of the counties that make up each diocese.

The aim of this project was to develop a dataset describing the U.S. Catholic Church at the diocesan level. The total project consists of six decades' worth of data, from 1940 through 1990. Diocesan information collected from churches and other sources was merged with U.S. Census data describing population and other characteristics of the counties that make up each diocese.

Survey data on new religious movements (NRM) in the United States are difficult to find, particularly when the movements in question are reticent to talk with outsiders. UFO abductees are individuals who believe they have been kidnapped by extra-terrestrials. Many abductees believe that extraterrestrials have the ability to erase memories of the abduction. In the 1980s a number of support groups for abductees appeared in the United States with the expressed purpose of helping abductees to recover their memories of alien abductions. The principal investigator was able to survey the membership of one such group, the UFO Contact Center International (now defunct) in 1990.

The survey contained a series of demographic questions, including gender, age, marital status and history, and occupation. At the group’s request, the survey also included several items regarding the abduction experience itself, such as the number of reported abductions, the abductees’ feelings about the experience, dates of abductions, and methods used to recover memories. These data provide a snapshot of the UFO abduction movement as it appeared in 1990.