This study compared three methods of collecting survey data about sexual behaviors and other sensitive topics: computer-assisted personal interviewing (CAPI), computer-assisted self-administered interviewing (CASI), and audio computerassisted self-administered interviewing (ACASI). Interviews were conducted with an area probability sample of more than 300 adults in Cook County, Illinois. The experiment also compared open and closed questions about the number of sex partners and varied the context in which the sex partner items were embedded. The three mode groups did not differ in response rates, but the mode of data collection did affect the level of reporting of sensitive behaviors: both forms of self-administration tended to reduce the disparity between men and women in the number of sex partners reported. Self-administration, especially via ACASI, also increased the proportion of respondents admitting that they had used illicit drugs. In addition, when the closed answer options emphasized the low end of the distribution, fewer sex partners were reported than when the options emphasized the high end of the distribution; responses to the open-ended versions of the sex partner items generally fell between responses to the two closed versions. Over the past 2 decades, two trends have transformed survey data collection in the United States. The first trend has been the introduction and widespread adoption of computerized tools for surveys; these

Although the importance of religion as an attitudinal predictor in general and as a marker of cultural pluralism in particular has been increasing acknowledged in recent years (Smith, 1986), the use of religion in sociological analysis has been stunted by the difficulty of working with denominational variables. The basic reason for the difficulty is the complex nature of America's denominational profile. As the Reverend J. Gordon Melton-America's champion church hunter, once remarked, "We are probably the most religious people-and the most diversely religious people-on earth." Our tradition of religious pluralism goes deeply into our colonial history. Edwin S. Gaustad noted that even as early as the 17th century one found "Huguenots in Charleston, Anglicans in Tidewater Virginia, Catholics in St. Mary's City, Swedish Lutherans along the Delaware, Quakers and Presbyterians further up the river, Dutch Reform in Manhattan, Puritans in New England, Baptists, and Heaven-knows-what-else in Rhode Island." Early in the history of the American republic, the French aristocrat Talleyrand is reported to have derisively observed that the United States had 32 religions, but only one sauce. Since then America has continued to both import foreign and spawn indigenous religions, until by the late 1970s Melton came up with a list of 1,187 primary denominations in the United States. This makes religion a difficult variable to collect and probably even more troublesome to use. It leaves the analyst with a myriad of small, obscure, and easily confused groups to sift through. This problem is compounded by lack of government data on religion. Because the Census Bureau feels proscribed by the First Amendment from including religious affiliation questions on either the Census or the Current Population Survey (CPS), authoritative, fine-grain statistics on religion are in short supply. (The census of religious bodies was last conducted in 1936 and the CPS has not asked about religion since 1957. "Religion," 1958 and Mueller and Lane, 1972).

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