A New Approach for Studying Stratification and Religion: Early Results from a National Internet-Based Field Experiment study of U.S. Churches

Wallace, Michael; Wright, Bradley E.; Zozula, Christine; Missari, Stacy; Donnelly, Christopher M.; Wisnesky, Annie Scola

doi:10.1108/s0277-2833(2012)0000023018

Cited by 7 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 26 publications

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“…Our study uses an innovative variation of the traditional field experiment known as the Internet-based field experiment (IBFE) in which experimental subjects are contacted through the Internet (see Wallace et al 2012). In our case, we submitted applications online for jobs that were advertised in the Southern United States on a popular employment Web site.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Religious Affiliation and Hiring Discrimination in the American South

2014

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This article describes a field experiment in which we sent fictitious résumés to advertised job openings throughout the American South. We randomly altered the résumés to indicate affiliation in one of seven religious groups or a control group. We found that applicants who expressed a religious identity were 26 percent less likely to receive a response from employers. In general, Muslims, pagans, and atheists suffered the highest levels of discriminatory treatment from employers, a fictitious religious group and Catholics experienced moderate levels, evangelical Christians encountered little, and Jews received no discernible discrimination. We also found evidence suggesting the possibility that Jews received preferential treatment over other religious groups in employer responses. The results fit best with models of religious discrimination rooted in secularization theory and cultural distaste theory. We briefly discuss what our findings suggest for a more robust theory of prejudice and discrimination in society.

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Religious Affiliation and Hiring Discrimination in the American South

2014

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“…The present study is part of a larger project in which we investigate how church responses to potential newcomers vary by race and class of the person making the inquiry. We employ an emerging method known as the Internet-based field experiment (Wallace et al 2012) to contact churches by email inquiring about possible membership. Our study takes the form of an audit study (Pager and Shepherd 2008) that tests discrimination by churches against potential newcomers.…”

Section: Data Methods and Designmentioning

confidence: 99%

Religion, Race, and Discrimination: A Field Experiment of How American Churches Welcome Newcomers

Wright¹,

Donnelly²,

Wallace³

et al. 2019

Sociology of Religion

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This article reports the results of a nationwide audit study testing how Christian churches welcome potential newcomers to their churches as a function of newcomers' race and ethnicity. We sent email inquiries to 3,120 churches across the United States. The emails were ostensibly from someone moving to the area and looking for a new church to attend. That person's name was randomly varied to convey different racial and ethnic associations. In response to these inquiries, representatives from mainline Protestant churches-who generally embrace liberal, egalitarian attitudes toward race relations-actually demonstrated the most discriminatory behavior. They responded most frequently to emails with white-sounding names, somewhat less frequently to blackor Hispanic-sounding names, and much less to Asian-sounding names. They also sent shorter, less welcoming responses to nonwhite names. In contrast, evangelical Protestant and Catholic churches showed little variation across treatment groups in their responses. These findings underscore the role of homophily, organizational homogeneity, and the costs of racial integration in perpetuating the racial segregation of American religious life.

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“…We employ an emerging method known as the Internet‐based field experiment (Wallace et al. ) to contact churches by email inquiring about possible membership. Our study takes the form of an audit study (Pager and Shepherd ) that tests discrimination by churches against potential newcomers.…”

Section: Data Methods and Designmentioning

confidence: 99%