This paper has both a methodological and substantive focus. It first considers survey methodologies for measuring beliefs, perceptions and behavior within minority religious communities, and Jehovah’s Witnesses in particular. It then reports new findings from a quantitative study of Jehovah’s Witnesses in Canada and Argentina, with regard to four key dimensions of religiosity argued to be universally present across religions and cultural contexts: belief, belonging, bonding and behavior (Saroglou 2011).
Surveying religious minorities, particularly those significantly more religious on average within their national context, raises a number of challenges for scholars of contemporary religion. A key issue is how to sample such groups: they may feature in very small numbers in the population samples associated with standard surveys, or end up grouped with ‘other’. Larger samples depend on access to lists of adherents or congregations, or non-standard sampling methods such as snowballing or online recruitment. The former requires trusted relationships, common values and a shared interest in the findings of the proposed research. Such access has been rare to date, with few quantitative studies of surveys of the Jehovah’s Witness community published in the academic literature since Dobbelaere and Wilson’s survey of nine Belgian congregations (Dobbelaere and Wilson 1980). This renders the present study original and valuable.
Even with access to congregation lists, sampling is not straightforward: it is likely that there will be some selection biases regarding who chooses to complete the survey. Social desirability biases may also affect responses, for example if respondents have concerns regarding anonymity or data security, or overreport particular behaviors to communicate strength of religious identity. For a cross-national survey of religious minorities, questions must be meaningful both in theological terms and within each national context: standard measures of religiosity may be perceived as irrelevant or incongruent, or use wording that is insensitive. Standardized scales may not translate well to the community’s specific beliefs and behaviors, requiring adaptation, or bespoke questions and richer response options to capture community-specific features. The identity of the sponsoring organization may also influence response rates and responses: some religious communities are more skeptical of the motivation to count adherents, while others may be very familiar with being surveyed by their denomination, and frequent data reporting more broadly. Accordingly, researcher positionality must be considered when employing survey methods.
Addressing these issues requires questionnaire design that is sensitive to the religious and national context, careful sampling, and reflexivity to ensure meaningful and reliable data collection. These methodological challenges are of scholarly interest, and so the first part of this paper provides a case study of our experience of questionnaire design, drawing on expertise within the World Headquarters of Jehovah’s Witnesses in conducting surveys of the community. Questions were reviewed to ensure they would be meaningful to Witnesses in each context, with bespoke sets devised to capture important facets of Witness religiosity. Equally, it was judged important to incorporate a number of standard measures of religious belonging, belief and behavior from high-quality surveys such as the International Social Survey Program (ISSP) Religion modules and World Values Survey, to enable comparisons with population samples. Whether novel or standard, questions were back-translated into French and Spanish to ensure comparability.
The second part of the paper then covers analyses of the Argentinian and Canadian samples to provide an account of differences and commonalities between Witnesses in both contexts. This pair of contexts provides useful variation within which to assess the position and experiences of Jehovah’s Witnesses. A large majority of Argentinians identify as Catholic (63 percent according to a 2019 survey), and the Catholic church has special status in the Argentinian constitution (Frigerio 2012). In Canada, Catholics form the single largest denomination (with 30 percent of the population in the 2021 Census), but Protestants/other Christians (c. 33 percent) and the unaffiliated (26 percent) are also substantial groups. Religious freedom is protected in the Canadian constitution, and there is a strong legal tradition of multiculturalism more broadly. This paper deploys this contextual variation to compare large samples of Jehovah’s Witnesses (c. 2000) within each. The paper provides a demographic profile of Witnesses in each country, followed by analysis of differences in how respondents were socialized into the Witness community – whether primarily by families of upbringing, a spouse, or their own adoption of active witnessing in adulthood. Religious identification, belief and practice will then be compared, together with reported intrinsic and extrinsic motivations for religious involvement. Finally, social network diversity will be compared for Argentinian and Canadian Witnesses, to assess the extent to which each national sample exhibits bonding and bridging social capital. Where possible, comparisons will be drawn with population samples for each country using the ISSP and World Values Survey, to assess how distinctive Witnesses are within each context.
These analyses address questions which are central to the wider ‘Jehovah’s Witnesses – Motivations, Attitudes, Practices’ project. Belief in Jehovah is very likely to be a constant across and within national Witness communities. However, it is plausible that there is meaningful variation in religious practice and religious motivation across national contexts, as well as between age groups, by gender, and by religion of upbringing. Understanding national differences and sources of variation within both Argentina and Canada will provide insight into the social space of Witness religiosity, and likely scenarios for the longer term. Moreover, evidence on the extent of religious and social differences between Jehovah’s Witnesses and population samples will inform understanding of the gap between public perceptions and Witnesses’ reported experiences.
Dobbelaere, K. and B. R. Wilson (1980), ‘Jehovah's Witnesses in a Catholic Country: A Survey of Nine Belgian Congregations’, Archives de Sciences Sociales des Religions 50(1) pp. 89–110.
Frigerio, A. (2012) ‘Questioning Religious Monopolies and Free Markets: The Role of the State, the Church(es), and Secular Agents in the Management of Religion in Argentina’, Citizenship Studies 16(8) pp. 997–1011.
Saroglou, V. (2011) ‘Believing, Bonding, Behaving, and Belonging: The Big Four Religious Dimensions and Cultural Variation’, Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology 42(8) pp. 1320–1340.
This paper has two purposes: it examines survey methodologies for researching minority religious communities, taking the Jehovah’s Witnesses’ Motivations, Attitudes, Practices (JW-MAP) surveys as a case study; and then reports a comparative analysis of Jehovah’s Witnesses in Canada and Argentina. Analyzing responses from c. 2,000 Witnesses in each country, the paper compares religious belief, belonging, bonding, and behavior, examining differences in socialization pathways, religious motivations, and social networks as potential correlates of differences. Argentina’s predominantly Catholic context contrasts with Canada’s more diverse religious context and constitutional framework, providing useful contextual variation. Findings summarize national differences – and commonalities – in the religiosity of Jehovah’s Witnesses. By comparing Witnesses to broader population samples, the paper also provides evidence on their religious and social distinctiveness. The evidence presented here contributes to understanding of the evolving religious landscape, and the social space of Jehovah’s Witnesses within different national contexts.