Comparing the RELTRAD and Born‐Again/Evangelical Self‐Identification Approaches to Measuring American Protestantism

Abstract

The question of how Protestantism (including evangelicalism) is measured in social science research is of keen importance to those seeking to understand religion in American life. In this article, we compare and contrast two of the leading techniques for classifying Protestants. One of these approaches (the RELTRAD approach) categorizes respondents as evangelical Protestants, mainline Protestants, or black Protestants mainly on the basis of their denominational affiliation. By contrast, the self‐identification method utilizes information about a respondent's race and a yes/no question that asks respondents directly whether they consider themselves born‐again or evangelical Christians to create similar categories. We show that there is considerable overlap, though not perfect correlation, between the two approaches. Both methods produce similar estimates of the size of Protestant subgroups, and they paint similar religious and demographic portraits of the evangelical, mainline, and black Protestant communities. As a result, we argue that the self‐identification method can be an effective proxy for RELTRAD when RELTRAD is unavailable as a measurement option.

Choose the Method for Aggregating Religious Identities that Is Most Appropriate for Your Research

“…In such cases, a single demarcation such as born‐again status may be the best approach (Smith et al. ). Others argue that biblical literalism and the divinity of Jesus are the key markers of conservative or evangelical Protestantism (e.g., Hunter ), and thus a measure reflecting those beliefs may provide considerable explanatory power.…”

Supporting Evidence: Why Social Scientists Should Sometimes Consider Data Other than the General Social Survey

“…We conclude the “self‐identification approach can be a suitable proxy—if and when one is needed, at least for now—for RELTRAD” (Smith et al. ). Sherkat and Lehman provide no arguments or evidence to challenge our empirical analysis of these measures.…”

“…In this issue, Sherkat and Lehman () dismiss out of hand the usefulness of evaluating the consequences of sorting Protestants based on denominational affiliation versus self‐identity as a “born‐again or evangelical” Christian (Smith et al. ). They imply that such matters are only of interest to “for‐profit, nonscientific pollsters,” and not to serious researchers or social scientists…”

Reassessing the Concept and Measurement of Evangelicals: The Case for the RELTRAD Approach

“…While some scholarly attention has been given to the interrelationship between different measures for capturing evangelicals (e.g., Burge and Lewis ; Hackett and Lindsay ; Lewis and DeBernardo ; Smith et al. ), very little attention has been given to the varying conceptual underpinnings embodied in these different measurement strategies. This situation is consistent with “Goertz's Second Law,” which states “The amount of attention devoted to a concept is inversely related to the attention devoted to the quantitative measure” (Goertz : 2).…”

“…This lack of attention to differences in conceptual underpinnings is further aggravated by the fact that, when surveys inquire about the religious preferences of respondents, scholars have applied different conceptual labels to the resultant responses, usually labeling them “religious affiliations” (e.g., Smith et al. ; Steensland et al. ), though sometimes labeling them “religious identifications” (e.g., Alwin et al.…”