How many Americans attend church regularly (two or three times a month or more)? Extensive research suggests that the number who say they do so is between 35 and 45% of the adult population. Interestingly, new research by Phillip S. Brenner suggests that there is a significant gap between what Americans claim about their church attendance and their actual attendance.
Philip S. Brenner is a University of Michigan research fellow at the Institute for Social Research. His latest research compares what people say about their church attendance when surveyed about it with how often people actually attend based on data collected in time diaries, which are tools used to capture how time was actually spent after the fact. The results of Brenner’s findings will be published as “Exceptional behavior or exceptional identity? Overreporting of church attendance in the US” in Public Opinion Quarterly and as “Identity Importance and the Overreporting of Religious Service Attendance: Multiple Imputation of Religious Attendance using American Time Use Study and the General Social Survey” in the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion.
So What?
According to the data from “400 surveys and time diaries across four decades with three quarters of a million respondents in 13 nations . . . Americans exaggerate their church attendance more than anyone else.” More specifically, the time diary data suggests that about 23% of Americans do attend church regularly whereas the survey date shows that about 35 to 45% say they attend church regularly.
The overreporting rates are highest in America and Canada. In all other countries the overreporting rates were lower in ways that are considered statistically significant.
- What factors do you believe may contribute to America having the highest rate of overreporting regular church attendance?
- For those involved in leading congregations, do you regularly seek to understand the worship attendance patterns of those who participate in worship? If so, in what ways do you gather data and how has the knowledge of the differing patterns impacted the way you help people connect with your Christian community?