Opt-in panel survey uncovers substantial differences in belief and well-being across religiously unaffiliated groups, highlighting distinct profiles among atheists, agnostics, and non-identifiers.
The religiously unaffiliated represent nearly a third of American adults, yet most large‐scale surveys lack the question batteries necessary to examine this population in depth. This article introduces the Making Meaning Survey, a 2024 opt‐in panel survey of 15,296 US adults, including 12,014 atheists, agnostics, and respondents identifying as “nothing in particular.” The survey was designed to assess belief, spirituality, and meaning‐making among the religiously unaffiliated. Comparing these three identity groups, we document substantial differences in supernatural belief, spiritual self‐identification, spiritual practices, attitudes toward religion, and subjective well‐being. The dataset's principal value lies in its large subgroup samples and extensive question batteries rather than in unqualified population prevalence estimation. The data are publicly available through the Association of Religion Data Archives.
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Burge et al. (2026) studied this question.
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