Sociology of Religion: Exercises Using General Social Surveys, 2000-2002 [Instructional Materials]

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These instructional materials were developed from GENERAL SOCIAL SURVEYS, 1972-2002: [CUMULATIVE FILE], compiled by James A. Davis, Tom W. Smith, and Peter V. Marsden. The data file (an SPSS portable file) and accompanying documentation are provided to assist educators in instructing students about religion and social issues in the United States in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. An instructor's handout has also been included. This handout contains the following sections, among others: (1) an exercise using General Social Surveys data to create and validate a measure of religiosity, and then to relate the measure to other social variables, (2) an exercise using General Social Surveys data to explore the relationship between religiosity and other social variables using crosstabulation (focusing on two- and three-variable relationships) and to explore the concepts of explanation, spuriousness, and replication, and (3) an exercise using General Social Surveys data to create a measure of religious fundamentalism and to explore the relationship between this measure and various forms of religious behavior and opinions on social issues. The data contain information on the attitudes of a national probability sample of adults 18 years of age and older on a range of social and political issues. For this instructional subset, some variables were recoded and some new variables were created to facilitate analysis. Variables in the dataset include responses to questions on family and gender roles, abortion, sex and sexual materials, personal morals and social mores, social control, general political attitudes, and socioeconomic status.