Lds Activity Rates In The U.s. - 75%?

[smac97]

Here (emphasis added):

For many people of faith, attending religious services each week is often a way to renew their commitment to God. But not everyone goes to church regularly.

While 76.5 percent of Americans label themselves as religious, according to the Pew Research Center, studies from Gallup show that only 40 percent of Americans attend religious services each week.

Followers of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints attend church services the most, with 75 percent of its followers going to church each week, according to a chart from Dadaviz.

They were followed by Protestants, other Christians and Muslims, all of whom had 50 percent of their followers attending services at least once a week.

To find out how often followers of other faiths attend church, check out the graph from Dadaviz below:

 

 

I thought the average activity rate was around 50%.  Maybe that's worldwide.  And the data supporting the graphic above does not appear to be available.

 

Thanks,

 

-Smac

[ERayR]

Here (emphasis added):

For many people of faith, attending religious services each week is often a way to renew their commitment to God. But not everyone goes to church regularly.

While 76.5 percent of Americans label themselves as religious, according to the Pew Research Center, studies from Gallup show that only 40 percent of Americans attend religious services each week.

Followers of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints attend church services the most, with 75 percent of its followers going to church each week, according to a chart from Dadaviz.

They were followed by Protestants, other Christians and Muslims, all of whom had 50 percent of their followers attending services at least once a week.

To find out how often followers of other faiths attend church, check out the graph from Dadaviz below:

 

 

I thought the average activity rate was around 50%.  Maybe that's worldwide.  And the data supporting the graphic above does not appear to be available.

 

Thanks,

 

-Smac

 

I would like to see where the numbers come from.

[cinepro]

I suspect a lot of it had to do with people self-identifying as LDS.   The Church itself no doubt has excellent data on this, and I would be interested to get their reaction.

[Calm]

It is possible that it is measuring activity rate of those who self identify as LDS, while the other activity rate is for numbers of those on record given by the Church itself, including probably many who do not self identify as LDS even if they have been baptized and never requested name removal or were excommunicated.

 

PS:  I see that cinepro had much the same idea about the numbers.

Edited July 13, 2015 by calmoriah

[HappyJackWagon]

Yeah, don't buy that 75% activity rate for a second. The 40% number sounds much closer.

[Duncan]

yeah, I was thinking that too-of everyone that says they are LDS then 75% attend Church on sundays but that isn't reflective of everyone that was LDS

[Gray]

The number that was released then retracted in DN was 36% worldwide, I believe. I wouldn't be surprised at 40% in the US (my stake has 32%). 

 

75% is likely "of those who self identify as Mormon". 

Edited July 13, 2015 by Gray

[Scott Lloyd]

I would like to see where the numbers come from.

This is good news, if accurate.

 

Of course, it is self-reported. When doing a story year ago, I ran across the interesting fact that a lot of our less-active Church members (according to frequency of attendance) don't really regard themselves as less-active. Some responding to the survey may have overestimated their frequency of attendance.

[Scott Lloyd]

The number that was released then retracted in DN was 36% worldwide, I believe. I wouldn't be surprised at 40% in the US (my stake has 32%). 

 

75% is likely "of those who self identify as Mormon". 

I think the survey question, as reported here, was pretty clear in specifying frequency of attendance, not self-identification.

[daz2]

I attended a conference on the social science of religion a couple of years ago where it was confirm that numbers like these reflect self-identified members of religions.  A big change over the last few decades is that people who in the past would have self-identified as a nonattending Protestant (or Catholic or Mormon) today simply identify as not part of the particular faith at all.  That is, the former of group of "Jack Mormons" is becoming smaller and smaller.  Yesterday's Jack Mormons nowadays don't self-identify as Mormon at all.  Rick Phillips did a fascinating presentation on this last fall--noting that the dramatic drop in self-identified Mormons in Utah doesn't reflect more people leaving the Church activity or belief, it just represents a change in self-identification.  (Outside of Utah there has not been a sharp drop in self-identified Mormons, but in Utah there has been.  He hypothesizes this is because the social cost within Utah of ceasing to self-identify as Mormon is declined greatly over the last couple of decades.)

[JulieM]

It's too bad that whoever conducted the survey did not make their data available for us to read. Until they do, the results are not very useful.

[mfbukowski]

In probably 20 years of being privy to statistical reports I have never seen anything that high.  Maybe I live in the wrong area.

 

50% more or less is more accurate hereabouts. (So Cal)

[canard78]

I think the survey question, as reported here, was pretty clear in specifying frequency of attendance, not self-identification.

We've agreed in the past that Dehlin's surveys are mostly junk data, so hopefully you'll allow me some credibility when I say that until we have a source and method, this data is useless.

If, in my job in a market research firm, I put this dadazis chart into one of my presentations the client or my boss would have a conversation with me like this:

"Where's this chart from?"

"Dadavis.com"

"What's the data source?"

"I don't know"

"What's the sampling technique?"

"I don't know"

"What's the sample size?"

"I don't know"

"How were the denominations identified?"

"I don't know"

"What context was it asked in?"

"I don't know"

"What's the chart doing in the report then?"

"...I'll take it out... sorry"

I clicked on the reporting source expecting it to be some anonymous but enthusiastic blogger somewhere. Nope, Deseret News. Maybe they've checked and verified the source. Maybe it is credible and comes from a robust source... Or maybe not. Problem is there's nothing in there to give credibility to the data. It could be off a reddit poll or a Twitter aggregated feed of a students high school project that he emailed to friends and family. Without a source, we've no idea. Some of the other visualisations on the site are questionable.

As it happens, I can actually believe the data, if the answers to the questions about sampling are "among those who self-identify as Mormon, how many go to church once a week."

EDIT:

It took me less than 5 minutes on google to find the source! The source is Gallup (so yes, credibility of source).

 

Results for this Gallup poll are based on telephone interviews conducted Jan. 2-Dec. 21, 2014, on the Gallup U.S. Daily survey, with a random sample of 173,490 adults, aged 18 and older, living in all 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia. For results based on the total sample of national adults, the margin of sampling error is ±1 percentage point at the 95% confidence level.

 

http://www.gallup.com/poll/180347/three-quarters-americans-identify-christian.aspx?utm_source=mormons&utm_medium=search&utm_campaign=tiles

 

There's not a full question given for identifying a Mormon, but it's said to be "when asked for their religious preference" - so self-identifying. This approach comes up with a figure of 2%

 

Pew's survey reports a similar % self-identifying, but to a decimal point: 1.6% 

 

http://www.pewforum.org/2015/05/12/americas-changing-religious-landscape/

 

If both of these sources are representative of the whole of the USA then:

 

5.1million self identify as Mormon

3.8million attend weekly

 

The church reports 6.5mn Mormons in USA

http://www.mormonnewsroom.org/facts-and-statistics/country/united-states

 

So 79% of Mormons (5.1/6.5) self-identify as Mormon and 59% (3.8/6.5) attend weekly. The 75% is, however, probably overclaim (just as it would be for all denominations). Instead it's probably more representative of those who see themselves as regular attendees.

 

/geek diversion over... I really need to get back to work

Edited July 14, 2015 by canard78

[Stargazer]

Up until seven or eight years ago I was the ward clerk and counted attendees every Sunday for sacrament meeting.  Our attendance seemed to hover around 195-215 each week, which represented about 40% (consonant with HappyJackWagon's figure).  On the other hand, I never attempted to count WHO was attending every week.  As I recall, the standard for "active" is someone who attends church at least once per month.  We might very well have had a rotating group of occasional attenders who could conceivably have been brought up our attendance to something higher than 50%.  I have no idea how this could get figured out, though.

 

Back then, I kind of knew everyone in the ward, due to my calling.  We've had a lot of changeover since then, however, and there's lots of people I don't know.  Maybe when I get some time on my hands I could do a serious study of how many people attend at least once per month.  RIght now I have more urgent maters to deal with.

[JAHS]

Northern CA about 50% in my ward (when some visitors come).

Edited July 14, 2015 by JAHS

[Mars]

my ward in northern virginia is like at 75% - no lie.

[Mars]

/geek diversion over... I really need to get back to work

 

geek?  sir, i see no code nor circuit diagrams in your posting history...

[Spammer]

We've agreed in the past that Dehlin's surveys are mostly junk data, so hopefully you'll allow me some credibility when I say that until we have a source and method, this data is useless.

If, in my job in a market research firm, I put this dadazis chart into one of my presentations the client or my boss would have a conversation with me like this:

"Where's this chart from?"

"Dadavis.com"

"What's the data source?"

"I don't know"

"What's the sampling technique?"

"I don't know"

"What's the sample size?"

"I don't know"

"How were the denominations identified?"

"I don't know"

"What context was it asked in?"

"I don't know"

"What's the chart doing in the report then?"

"...I'll take it out... sorry"

I clicked on the reporting source expecting it to be some anonymous but enthusiastic blogger somewhere. Nope, Deseret News. Maybe they've checked and verified the source. Maybe it is credible and comes from a robust source... Or maybe not. Problem is there's nothing in there to give credibility to the data. It could be off a reddit poll or a Twitter aggregated feed of a students high school project that he emailed to friends and family. Without a source, we've no idea. Some of the other visualisations on the site are questionable.

As it happens, I can actually believe the data, if the answers to the questions about sampling are "among those who self-identify as Mormon, how many go to church once a week."

EDIT:

It took me less than 5 minutes on google to find the source! The source is Gallup (so yes, credibility of source).

 

http://www.gallup.com/poll/180347/three-quarters-americans-identify-christian.aspx?utm_source=mormons&utm_medium=search&utm_campaign=tiles

 

There's not a full question given for identifying a Mormon, but it's said to be "when asked for their religious preference" - so self-identifying. This approach comes up with a figure of 2%

 

Pew's survey reports a similar % self-identifying, but to a decimal point: 1.6% 

 

http://www.pewforum.org/2015/05/12/americas-changing-religious-landscape/

 

If both of these sources are representative of the whole of the USA then:

 

5.1million self identify as Mormon

3.8million attend weekly

 

The church reports 6.5mn Mormons in USA

http://www.mormonnewsroom.org/facts-and-statistics/country/united-states

 

So 79% of Mormons (5.1/6.5) self-identify as Mormon and 59% (3.8/6.5) attend weekly. The 75% is, however, probably overclaim (just as it would be for all denominations). Instead it's probably more representative of those who see themselves as regular attendees.

 

/geek diversion over... I really need to get back to work

 

I had the same questions.  Nice piece of research, diagnosis and analysis.   I concur, the numbers are likely inflated due to self-reporting bias. You'll have a problem if you have a tradition in the mix in which only active members of the tradition self-identify as belonging to that tradition, hence the critical importance of good screening questions.   [From someone who also administers surveys and crunches numbers - for the Dept of Defense]

Edited July 14, 2015 by Spammer

[Nofear]

So, we can still report it as: 75% of self-identifying Mormons attend worship services almost weekly?

[Okrahomer]

It took me less than 5 minutes on google to find the source! The source is Gallup (so yes, credibility of source).

 

http://www.gallup.com/poll/180347/three-quarters-americans-identify-christian.aspx?utm_source=mormons&utm_medium=search&utm_campaign=tiles

 

There's not a full question given for identifying a Mormon, but it's said to be "when asked for their religious preference" - so self-identifying. This approach comes up with a figure of 2%

 

Pew's survey reports a similar % self-identifying, but to a decimal point: 1.6% 

 

http://www.pewforum.org/2015/05/12/americas-changing-religious-landscape/

 

If both of these sources are representative of the whole of the USA then:

 

5.1million self identify as Mormon

3.8million attend weekly

 

The church reports 6.5mn Mormons in USA

http://www.mormonnewsroom.org/facts-and-statistics/country/united-states

 

So 79% of Mormons (5.1/6.5) self-identify as Mormon and 59% (3.8/6.5) attend weekly. The 75% is, however, probably overclaim (just as it would be for all denominations). Instead it's probably more representative of those who see themselves as regular attendees.

 

The Church membership figures include adults, children, and infants; but the PEW and Gallup data are based on adult religious self-identification only--i.e., those 18 years and older.  Gallup does sometimes include the decimal (please see the table at the bottom of this article for example and note the trend for Mormons.)  Finally, as far as I know, the only reliable religious self-identification survey of US teens is this University of North Carolina study which indicates that 2.5% of US teens self-identify as "Mormon"--so a bit higher than the adult population (see Table 1 on page 31.)  When one accounts for these age group differences, the LDS Church-reported membership figures are not all that different from those predicted by these surveys--at least within the upper end of the margins of error.  So, it seems like this approach still doesn't explain the self-reported activity rate.

Edited July 14, 2015 by Okrahomer

[Ahab]

Here (emphasis added):

For many people of faith, attending religious services each week is often a way to renew their commitment to God. But not everyone goes to church regularly.

While 76.5 percent of Americans label themselves as religious, according to the Pew Research Center, studies from Gallup show that only 40 percent of Americans attend religious services each week.

Followers of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints attend church services the most, with 75 percent of its followers going to church each week, according to a chart from Dadaviz.

They were followed by Protestants, other Christians and Muslims, all of whom had 50 percent of their followers attending services at least once a week.

To find out how often followers of other faiths attend church, check out the graph from Dadaviz below:

I thought the average activity rate was around 50%. Maybe that's worldwide. And the data supporting the graphic above does not appear to be available.

Thanks,

-Smac

So religious "activity" is all about whether or not people go to a church building and the "activity rate" is based on weekly church attendance.

Doesn't say much if anything at all about how well people are incorporating religious principles into their own lives. People can go to their church buildings every week and still not mature very well spiritually.

Living a religion is not the same thing as going to a church building and I have 2 sons who haven't gone to a church building in several years who are still very good members of our Church.

[Okrahomer]

So religious "activity" is all about whether or not people go to a church building and the "activity rate" is based on weekly church attendance.

Doesn't say much if anything at all about how well people are incorporating religious principles into their own lives. People can go to their church buildings every week and still not mature very well spiritually.

Living a religion is not the same thing as going to a church building and I have 2 sons who haven't gone to a church building in several years who are still very good members of our Church.

 

Amen!

[cinepro]

So religious "activity" is all about whether or not people go to a church building and the "activity rate" is based on weekly church attendance.

Doesn't say much if anything at all about how well people are incorporating religious principles into their own lives. People can go to their church buildings every week and still not mature very well spiritually.

Living a religion is not the same thing as going to a church building and I have 2 sons who haven't gone to a church building in several years who are still very good members of our Church.

 

I don't see where anyone implied that going to church was anything more than "going to church", or that this indicated anything about those who don't go to church.  It appears to be a survey that measured peoples' responses to a question about a specific activity, separate from any other considerations of moral character or goodness.

[rpn]

I think one reason why the survey skews so high is that those who do not consider themselves mormon, despite the existence of church records that say otherwise, do not self-identify.  And those who remain believers do.   Even if half are less active, if only half of them claim membership, the numbers reported would be 75/25.   Further, if the question were how often do you attend church, most members would automatically say every week, even if they skip some weeks.   If the survey question asked did you attend last week, did you attend the week before, did you attend the week before that, only then are they likely to get fully accurate numbers of how many are attending.

Edited July 14, 2015 by rpn

[mfbukowski]

my ward in northern virginia is like at 75% - no lie.

The farther from Utah the better.

 

That makes sense

 

It's all those Fifth Generation Mormons that bring down the averages.