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Title The Effects of Excluding Cell-Only Respondents on Understanding Religion in the United States
Source The American Association for (AAPOR) 63rd Annual Conference, 2008 & WAPOR 61th Annual Conference, 2008
Year 2008
Access date 20.05.2009
Abstract

In recent years, as more Americans have come to rely on cell phones as their only source of telephone service, many scholars have devoted considerable attention to the impact of the exclusion of the cell-only population from many telephone surveys. Much has been learned about the characteristics of the cell-only population, and about the effect that their exclusion has on the results of opinion surveys. The Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, a project of the Pew Research Center, recently completed data collection on a survey based on a large national sample, including cell-phone interviews with 500 cell-only respondents. The detailed religion questions in the survey allow us to shed new light on the religious characteristics of the cell-only population. Specifically, this paper will describe the degree to which the religious affiliation of the cell-only population differs from that of the landline population. The cell-only population will also be compared with the landline population with respect to certain basic religious practices (i.e., church attendance) and beliefs (i.e., religious salience). The paper will analyze the extent to which observed differences in these characteristics can be explained by the demographic characteristics of the cell-only population (such as their age and educational background). Finally, the paper will discuss the broader implications of the religious characteristics of the cell-only population for understanding and addressing the cell-only problem in survey research. Religion is, of itself, an important phenomenon for social scientists to understand, and this is underscored by the close correlations between religious affiliation, beliefs and behavior on the one hand and political attitudes and behavior on the other. By furthering understanding of the religious characteristics of the cell-only population, this paper contributes to the effort to understand and address the nature and extent of the cell-only problem.

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Year of publication2008
Bibliographic typeConferences, workshops, tutorials, presentations
Full text availabilityAvailable on request
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