Assessing Independent Variables in Cross National Datasets: the Case of Religiosity (Advanced Version)

JOSÉ RAMÓN MONTERO; MARÍA CELESTE RATTO; GUILLERMO CORDERO

Potsdam, Alemania

Congreso; 5th ECPR General Conference (European Consortium of Political Research); 2009

European Consortium of Political Research (ECPR)

Comparative cross-national datasets have long been a crucial tool in comparative politics and in public opinion research. However, many indicators included in those datasets are to a large extent being used independently of their quality, i.e., of their reliability and validity. This paper is a first attempt to assess several cross-national datasets tapping religious phenomena. For that purpose we have built a dataset that contains so far 124 surveys coming from a large number of regional or thematic datasets. We have checked the quality of those religiosity indicators through a systematic exploration of the results obtained in several cross-national datasets. The results of this exploratory analysis show large variations in actual results according to the design of the questions on religiosity, the question wording, and the answer items.