New Data and Measures on Societal Discrimination and Religious Minorities

Abstract

Previous data collections have demonstrated that the state discriminates against religions in many ways, but few offer measures on societal discrimination, and none collect data on societal discrimination using religious minorities as the unit of analysis. This study introduces and presents the Religion and State round 3 (RAS3) dataset as a comprehensive collection including a newly collected Societal Module as well as a revised Minorities Module. The Societal Module offers important new measures on societal actions against religious minorities as well as the actions of minorities against other religious groups. This data includes a wide range of discriminatory behaviors ranging from specific forms of harassment and economic discrimination to specific forms of physical violence. Each of these measures was collected for 183 nations and for 771 religious minorities which includes all minorities meeting a 0.25 percent population cutoff as well as some smaller minorities. This study reviews and evaluates the RAS3 collection and finds a high level of reliability and validity for most of the newly constructed indexes and the measures they include.