DOI: 10.3886/icpsr38576.v2
title: National Survey of Religious Leaders, United States, 2019-2020
title: Version 2

description: The National Survey of Religious Leaders (NSRL) is a survey of a nationally representative sample of 1,600 clergy from across the religious spectrum. It surveyed religious leaders who work in congregations, including full-time and part-time ministerial staff, assistant and specialist ministerial staff (such as youth ministers, religious education directors, and others), and head clergy. Conducted in 2019-2020, the NSRL contains a wealth of information about congregations' religious leaders. There are questions about respondents' jobs and careers, including job satisfaction; religious beliefs and practices; views about and practices related to mental health; attitudes and practices related to end-of-life issues; community involvement; political attitudes and practices; engagement with the larger religious world; knowledge of and attitudes about science, and how science informs their work; primary information sources; mental and physical health; and demographic characteristics such as gender, race/ethnicity, age, education, birthplace, marital status, and income. Overall, the NSRL provides a multi-faceted portrait of those who lead religious congregations in the United States.
description: The purpose of this study was to create a nationally-representative sample of religious leaders and their views on their careers and religious practices, as well as demographic characteristics.
description: In collaboration with National Opinion Research Center (NORC) at the University of Chicago, the NSRL gathered data from February 2019 to June 2020 primarily via an online self-administered questionnaire. Primary leaders who did not initially respond were more intensively recruited than secondary leaders. They were mailed a paper questionnaire, called on the telephone, and offered enhanced incentives to participate. These efforts produced a much higher cooperation rate among primary leaders than among secondary leaders.
description: The raw data are not weighted. The NSRL can be conceptualized and used as three distinct samples. It can be conceptualized as (a) a sample only of primary congregational leaders, (b) a sample only of secondary congregational leaders, or (c) a sample of all congregational religious leaders (including both primary and secondary leaders). Analysts should use the NSRL weight appropriate for each conceptualization. Moreover, the NSRL, like the NCS, is a probability-proportional-to-size sample. Leaders of larger congregations are more likely than leaders of smaller congregations to be in the sample. Consequently, in addition to weighting the data to focus on primary leaders, secondary leaders, or all leaders, analysts can weight the data so that results represent leaders without respect to the size of their congregations, or they can weight the data so that results represent leaders in proportion to the number of people in their congregations. Most analysts, for most purposes, likely will want to focus on primary leaders, weighting the data so that results represent leaders without respect to their congregation's size. This means that, although the NSRL public dataset contains nine weights, most analysts, for most purposes, will want to use WT_NSRL_PRIMARY_DUP. See the NSRL codebook for more information about NSRL weights.
description: Response Rates: The cooperation rates were 70 percent among primary leaders and 23 percent among secondary leaders, for an overall cooperation rate of 37 percent. Taking into account the NCS-IV's own 69 percent response rate, the NSRL's response rate is approximately 50 percent for primary leaders and 17 percent for secondary leaders. Response rates are approximate because different assumptions about how many leaders of congregations that did not respond to the NCS-IV would have been out-of-scope for the NSRL shift the response rates up or down by 1 or 2 percentage points. See the NSRL codebook for details.
description: The NSRL sample was generated in conjunction with the fourth wave of the National Congregations Study (NCS-IV) and the 2018 General Social Survey (GSS). The GSS is an in-person survey of a nationally representative sample of non-institutionalized, English- or Spanish-speaking adults, conducted by NORC at the University of Chicago. The 2018 GSS asked respondents who said they attended religious services at least once a year where they attend. The congregations named by these respondents constitute a probability-proportional-to-size nationally representative sample of religious congregations in the United States, and the leaders of those congregations constitute a nationally representative sample of congregational leaders. The NCS-IV gathered data from the congregations attended by respondents to the 2018 GSS. The NSRL gathered data from leaders of congregations that participated in the NCS-IV.
description: Datasets: 
DS0: Study-Level Files
DS1: Public-Use Dataset
DS2: Restricted-Use Dataset
description: Leaders of United States congregations from across the religious spectrum. Smallest Geographic Unit: Region
description: web-based surveyFor additional information on the study, please visit the National Survey of Religious Leaders website.The restricted-use dataset is a combination of the public-use dataset and DS1: Cumulative (1998, 2006-07, 2012, and 2018-19) Cross-Sectional Data File from the National Congregations Study: Cumulative File, 1998, 2006-2007, 2012, 2018-2019, [United States] (ICPSR 3471).This collection is related to National Congregations Study (NCS), [United States] (ICPSR 38472) and National Congregations Study: Cumulative File, 1998, 2006-2007, 2012, 2018-2019, [United States] (ICPSR 3471).To access the public NSRL data file, download the public-use dataset. The restricted-use dataset contains the linked NSRL-NCS dataset.