Studies that embed experimental designs within probability surveys combine the causal power of the former with generalizability of the latter. Survey Experiments for the Scientific Study of Religion (SESSR) will bolster the use of this methodology within the social scientific study of religion. The project will issue a call for proposals to field survey experiments on a nationally representative survey of U.S. adults through NORC’s AmeriSpeak panel. A minimum of 25 survey experiments will be supported over the life of the project, with at least four dedicated to current graduate students and at least four dedicated to early career scholars.
Once proposals are selected, the SESSR team will work with the supported researchers to field the selected survey experiments using NORC’s AmeriSpeak Panel. All experiments will be required to be pre-registered with the Open Science Framework. Supported researchers will have exclusive access to their data for a period of one year. After that time, the SESSR project will make the data and metadata publicly available at The Association of Religion Data Archives in the spirit of open science. Other outputs include two panels at a national conference featuring projects supported by SESSR, three professional development workshops for participants, and two virtual conferences.
