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Does Funding Impact Our Research? Causality, Normativity, and Diversity in 40 Years of U.S. Sociology of Religion
Author(s) -
May Matthew,
Smilde David
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
journal for the scientific study of religion
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.941
H-Index - 71
eISSN - 1468-5906
pISSN - 0021-8294
DOI - 10.1111/jssr.12536
Subject(s) - public funding , causality (physics) , sociology of religion , positive correlation , diversity (politics) , sociology , order (exchange) , sample (material) , political science , social science , public administration , law , economics , finance , physics , quantum mechanics , medicine , chemistry , chromatography
In this article we use a sample of 40 years of sociology journal articles ( N = 1,024) on religion to ask what role funding plays in some of the leading trends in the subdiscipline. Our analysis reveals a considerable increase in the number of published articles on religion with funding over the past 40 years as well as a shift away from public funding as the primary source of funding. Engaging our findings in previous analyses of this database, we surprisingly find a positive correlation between public funding and positive socio‐evaluative findings in articles on religion, but not between private funding and positive socio‐evaluative findings. We also find a positive correlation between funding from religious organizations and research on religion in the United States and a weak, but negative, correlation between funding from religious organizations and research on non‐Christian religious traditions. We do not find a relationship between funding and causal order.