Examing Religious Activity and Well-Being Trends in the American Time Use Survey Data (2012, 2013, & 2021)
Driving Questions
- How do rates of participation in religious activities differ? How have these trends changed over time?
- Is the gendered face of religious America changing, especially among generational lines?
- How do different types of employment affect religious participation?
- What is the relationship between religious participation and reported levels of well-being? Does this change across varying demographic factors?
The Motivating Visual
While exploring the American Time Use Survey Dataset, our group discovered that people that spend the most time participating in religious activity report extreme levels of well-being (whether extremely low or extremely high). We decided to investigate this trend further.
We used the IPUMS API key to examine this data. For this visual, we used the rectangular data structure extract to understand summary statistics related to religious participation and well-being. We also used a weighted average of well-being using weight wt06.
Digging Deeper
With these figures, we wanted to understand whether people on various different well-being ladder levels reported religious activity. In the figure on the left, it appeared that people who reported higher levels of well-being also reported spending some time participating in relgious activities. We also explored what percent of respondents in each well being ladder reported some religious activity.
Exploring the Individual
To do so, we created a microdata extract using a hierarchical data structure. We merged individual data with activity data by joining the data sets (left join in SQL) on a case ID number to build the profiles to the left.
We visualized the data using pandas and matplotlib and then refined the profiles using Figma.