Welcome to the Secular Communities Survey!
The Secular Communities Survey is the largest-ever study of the community life of secular and nonreligious people in the United States. The survey also measures people’s political views and their degree of civic engagement.
SURVEY BEGINS MARCH 1, 2021
Though we know there are about 1,400 local communities for nonbelievers in the United States, few researchers have considered them when thinking about community life. At a time when more Americans than ever identify as having no religion, it is imperative to include them in surveys interested in civic engagement, prosocial values, and politics. The Secular Communities Survey meets this need in concert with our sister study, the Meaning of Religion project, which takes a broader focus on the transmission of values across generations.
If you are a member of a secular community, we hope that you’ll participate in our survey and that you’ll encourage members of your community to participate, too. Please follow this link to access it. The survey is entirely anonymous and should take about 10-15 minutes to complete.
In addition to contributing to the understanding of community life in the United States, we also hope that the Secular Communities Survey will help members of secular communities gain a broader and deeper understanding of themselves. To accomplish this goal, we are working with secular organizations throughout the country to distribute our results back to the communities we study.
The Secular Community Survey has been funded by grants from the John Templeton Foundation and the Institute for Social, Behavioral and Economic Research (ISBER) at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
This research is approved by the Human Subjects Committee of the University of California, Santa Barbara.
We’re very grateful for your participation and your help, and we’re happy to answer any questions if you have them. Please contact us by emailing secular.survey@hfa.ucsb.edu.