Methodology

The American Trends Panel survey methodology

Overview

The American Trends Panel (ATP), created by Pew Research Center, is a nationally representative panel of randomly selected U.S. adults. Panelists participate via self-administered web surveys. Panelists who do not have internet access at home are provided with a tablet and wireless internet connection. Interviews are conducted in both English and Spanish. The panel is being managed by Ipsos.

Data in this report is drawn from ATP Wave 132, conducted from July 31 to Aug. 6, 2023. A total of 11,201 panelists responded out of 12,932 who were sampled, for a response rate of 87%. The cumulative response rate accounting for nonresponse to the recruitment surveys and attrition is 3%. The break-off rate among panelists who logged on to the survey and completed at least one item is 1%. The margin of sampling error for the full sample of 11,201 respondents is plus or minus 1.4 percentage points.

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.⁷ 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.⁸

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 effort (known as an “oversample”) to boost sample size with under-represented groups. For example, Hispanic adults, Black adults, 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, 12,932 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.

Sample design

The overall target population for this survey was noninstitutionalized persons ages 18 and older living in the U.S., including Alaska and Hawaii. All active panel members were invited to participate in this wave.

Questionnaire development and testing

The questionnaire was developed by Pew Research Center in consultation with Ipsos. The web program was rigorously tested on both PC and mobile devices by the Ipsos project management team and Pew Research Center researchers. The Ipsos project management team also populated test data that was analyzed in SPSS to ensure the logic and randomizations were working as intended before launching the survey.

Incentives

All respondents were offered a post-paid incentive for their participation. Respondents could choose to receive the post-paid incentive in the form of a check or a gift code to Amazon.com or could choose to decline the incentive. Incentive amounts ranged from $5 to $20 depending on whether the respondent belongs to a part of the population that is harder or easier to reach. Differential incentive amounts were designed to increase panel survey participation among groups that traditionally have low survey response propensities.

Data collection protocol

The data collection field period for this survey was July 31-Aug. 6, 2023. Postcard notifications were mailed to all ATP panelists with a known residential address on July 31. 

Invitations were sent out in two separate launches: soft launch and full launch. Sixty panelists were included in the soft launch, which began with an initial invitation sent on July 31. The ATP panelists chosen for the initial soft launch were known responders who had completed previous ATP surveys within one day of receiving their invitation. All remaining English- and Spanish-speaking sampled panelists were included in the full launch and were sent an invitation on Aug. 1.

All panelists with an email address received an email invitation and up to two 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 two 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 for very high rates of leaving questions blank, as well as always selecting the first or last answer presented. As a result of this checking, one ATP respondent was removed from the survey dataset prior to weighting and analysis.

Weighting

The ATP data is 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 selection for their initial recruitment survey. These weights are then rescaled and adjusted to account for changes in the design of ATP recruitment surveys from year to year.

Finally, the weights are calibrated to align with the population benchmarks in the accompanying table to correct for nonresponse to recruitment surveys and panel attrition. If only a subsample of panelists was invited to participate in the wave, this weight is adjusted to account for any differential probabilities of selection.

Among the panelists who completed the survey, this weight is then calibrated again to align with the population benchmarks identified in the accompanying table and trimmed at the 1st and 99th percentiles to reduce the loss in precision stemming from variance in the weights. 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.

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

Defining spiritual and religious categories

The report analyzes four main groups: people who are spiritual but not religious (22%); people who are religious and spiritual (48%); people who are religious but not spiritual (10%); and people who are neither spiritual nor religious (21%). These groups are created based on their answers to four questions:

• Do you think of yourself as spiritual? (Yes or No)
• Do you think of yourself as religious? (Yes or No)
• How important is spirituality in your life? (Very, somewhat, not too, or not at all important)
• How important is religion in your life? (Very, Somewhat, Not too, or Not at all important)

Anyone who says they think of themselves as spiritual or who says spirituality is very important in their life counts as spiritual. Likewise, anyone who says they think of themselves as religious or who says that religion is very important in their life counts as religious.

This method is one of several possible ways to create these categories. For example, one could create a four-way grouping using only the self-ID questions (Do you think of yourself as spiritual? Do you think of yourself as religious?). Doing so would result in a somewhat larger spiritual but not religious group (25%), a somewhat larger religious but not spiritual group (14%), and a somewhat smaller religious and spiritual group (38%). The category of people who are neither spiritual nor religious would be similar in size (22%).

Similarly, one could create a four-way grouping using only the salience questions (How important is spirituality in your life? How important is religion in your life?). Doing so would result in a smaller spiritual but not religious group (10%), a smaller religious and spiritual group (30%), and a larger group of people who are neither spiritual nor religious (52%). The category of people who are religious but not spiritual would be a slightly smaller size (8%).

We also grappled with the question of how to categorize people who say spirituality or religion is “somewhat” important in their life. For example, if a respondent says they do not think of themself as spiritual, and says that spirituality is “somewhat” important in their life, should they count as spiritual? We ultimately decided to leave people on this level of the spectrum out of the spiritual category. In other words, saying spirituality is “somewhat” important, by itself, does not suffice for a respondent to be categorized as spiritual. However, those who say spirituality is “somewhat” important in their life and describe themselves as spiritual do cross the threshold into spiritual category. The same rule is applied to those whom we counted as religious.

Of course, some researchers might advocate for a different kind of definition altogether. For instance, they might define categories based on certain spiritual or religious beliefs or practices.

We settled on our definitions of who counts as spiritual and/or religious for two main reasons: face validity and empirical coherence. First, there are respondents who say they do not think of themselves as spiritual (or religious) but, nonetheless, say that spirituality (or religion) is “very important” in their lives. Regardless of how they think of themselves, they are indicating that spirituality (or religion) is a salient part of their lives, and therefore we think – as a matter of face validity – they should be counted as spiritual (or religious, as the case may be).

Second, in our judgment, this approach produces more cohesive and logically consistent groups. For example, defining groups based solely on the self-ID questions would produce a spiritual but not religious group that is more traditionally religious on a number of related measures: the respondents in this group would be more likely to affiliate with a religion (52% vs. 45%), to believe in God as described in the Bible (29% vs. 20%) and to say they pray daily (30% vs. 21%) than respondents in a spiritual but not religious group using our definition, which combines self-ID (how respondents say they think of themselves) with a measure of salience (how important they say spirituality and religion are in their lives). To state the obvious, it is more consistent for a group that is “not religious” to be lower on measures of traditional religiosity.

As with all Center surveys, the dataset will soon be made freely available to the public, and researchers will be able to use it to redefine these categories or create new ones as they see fit.

© Pew Research Center, 2023