Attitudes versus Behaviors: Religion and Helping Others

Social researchers must be careful to make sure that the measures they use are valid. That is, do the questions measure what we think they measure? Some survey questions report on people’s attitudes about helping others, but they do not measure whether people actually do help others. It is easy to assume that attitudes and behaviors are the same, but often they are not. This module will use data from the 2014 and 2021 General Social Surveys using the Association of Religion Data Archives.