--- Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
>
> It's interesting that the BLS's time use survey,
> which relies on
> people keeping diaries about what they do, shows a
> much lower rate of
> church attendance. But aspirations and social
> pressures to conform do
> affect people's political opinions, so the urge to
> over-report isn't
> without consequences. Still...
[WS] Go with the BLS figures. Thhis is not the first time that a BLS survey debunks gallup results. A couple of years ago Galup did volunteering survey (paid for by the NGO think tanl Independent Sector) showing that nearly half of the US population. Starting in 2001, the BLS did a Septe which uses a much larger sample (60,000) asking questions on volunteering. The CPS figures were half of those produced by gallup (i.e about a quarter of the population) - and basically put the IS/Gallup venture out of business.
Several years ago Mark Chaves compared actual church attendance rates to those reported in surveys, and he found that on average only half of those who report attending actually do so (the findings were reported in ASR a couple of years ago). The likely reason is that people tend to overreport socially desirbale or expected behavior.
Wojtek
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