Americans stretch the truth on attending church
“I know what you did last Sunday,” claims the title of a new survey. You skipped church. And then nearly one in seven of you fibbed about attending.
That’s according to a new survey by the Public Religion Research Institute released May 17. The study, to be presented at the national meeting of the American Association for Public Opinion Research, was designed to measure the “social desirability bias in self-reported religious behavior.”
The survey finds that many Christians—and unbelievers, too—exaggerate about attending worship in live phone interviews. When asked in an anonymous online questionnaire, people answer more realistically.
