In their yet-to-be-published study, Cornell's Professor Landon Schnabel and colleagues Michael Hout from New York University and Sean Bock from Harvard, raise questions about the rapid decline in [measures of faith] during the pandemic, which they argue may be more due to changes in how the GSS was administered than a sign of religious decline.
These sociologists posit that the change in survey format is the driving factor behind 2021’s skewed results on religion. This is unfortunate, because the impact from these changes in GSS methodology blurs the true illustration of the United States’ changing religious landscape.
“If you want to measure change, don’t change how you measure it,” says Hout, and “in this moment of great change, we changed how we measure it.”
For the full story, read The Salt Lake Tribune article.
