Keywords: religion, spirituality, cross-national surveys

Surveys around the world have long measured religion through a Western lens. For example, asking questions about the importance of religion in a respondent's life or the frequency with which they attend religious services. These questions can work well to determine engagement with religion in societies that are traditionally Christian, Islamic or Jewish - religions that share some teachings and traditions.
However, studies using these measures often show less religiosity in some Eastern societies. But are the societies really less religious or are the measures missing underlying patterns of religion and spirituality that are more common in those traditions?
Using data from a new Pew Research Center survey in 36 countries (covering all six inhabited continents and representing a wide variety of religious traditions), we explore how countries compare on roughly a dozen newer measures of religion and spirituality - including what levels of spirituality are captured in Western societies when we use measures designed with a more Eastern outlook. We also look at how these new measures do or don't align with the survey industry's longstanding traditional measures of religiousness.
The survey included more than 90,000 respondents, with interviews conducted in dozens of languages.