Rice’s Kinder Institute receives major grant to study the impact of religion in everyday life
Lilly Endowment supports pathbreaking research

FROM RICE NEWS STAFF REPORTS

With a new grant from Lilly Endowment Inc., Rice University’s Kinder Institute for Urban Research will conduct the second wave of its pathbreaking Panel Study of American Religion and Ethnicity (PS-ARE) to understand the impact of religion in everyday life. With the latest grant, Lilly Endowment funding for the project has reached nearly $4 million.

	MICHAEL EMERSON

Led by Michael Emerson, co-director of the Kinder Institute, and David Sikkink of the University of Notre Dame, the study seeks to find the connections between religious and other forms of change among diverse individuals over time.

PS-ARE is the nation’s first panel study of religion and ethnicity. A panel study follows the same people throughout their lives. The first wave of the study was conducted in 2006 with a nationally representative sample of 2,600 adults, who will be surveyed every few years for the rest of their lives. More than 200 questions were posed during 80-minute in-home interviews on topics ranging from religion and spirituality to health, political attitudes and social activities.

“Now that we have established a connection between people’s views on religion and ethnicity with other social aspects of their lives, we can monitor how significant life events can influence and predict their religious attitudes and practices in the future,” said Emerson, the Allyn and Gladys Cline Professor of Sociology at Rice. “We are very honored by the continued support of Lilly Endowment to fund the next stage of this unique national project.”

The second wave of the study will revisit many of the same 200 questions, but several modules will be expanded so researchers can learn more about the formation of religious affiliation and identity, respondents’ perceptions of their work and what it means to them — a “calling” versus a source of income — and how spirituality affects health.

For more information on the Kinder Institute and PS-ARE, visit http://kinder.rice.edu/research/.