Democratizing Access to Data: The American Religion Data Archive

by Roger Finke, Jennifer McKinney and Matt Bahr * Democratizing Access to Data: The American Religion Data Archive (www.TheARDA.com) From its beginning, the American Religion Data Archive (ARDA) was developed to provide immediate access to the best data on American religion at no charge. Starting in 1997, the ARDA was created as an Internet-based archive and was designed to serve a highly diverse audience. But serving a diverse audience, including many with little or no background in the social sciences, required ARDA to meet the rigorous methodological standards of the social science community and still be easily used by those without a knowledge of statistics, research design or data management. Since its inception, the ARDA has attempted to democratize access to data, without compromising the integrity of the data being archived.