Key points are not available for this paper at this time.
Religion's prominence in national and international affairs makes the availability of empirical measures on religion a pressing concern for researchers, policymakers, and data archivists. Unfortunately, good international religious data are scarce. This paper describes the expanded mission of the Association of Religion Data Archives ( www.TheARDA.com) to archive and develop data on religion worldwide. The ARDA archives data on 238 different countries and territories including ARDA-coded measures from the US State Department's annual International Religious Freedom Reports. The data also include social scientific surveys such as the International Social Survey Programme (ISSP). Country-specific data will also be archived, e.g., ABC poll data from Afghanistan. Finally, this paper describes the way the ARDA "democratizes" accesses to these freely downloadable data by making them available with online analysis options. (The ARDA was formerly the American Religion Data Archive and continues to support an extensive American collection with numerous mapping and report features.)
Brian J. Grim (Wed,) studied this question.