Religion, Politics, and Public Data: Telling Stories with Numbers

3 units

This course equips students to analyze and communicate data on religion and politics in the United States. We explore how survey data shapes public understanding of partisan identity, religious affiliation, political behavior, and moral values. Students will learn to work with real-world datasets, clean and analyze them in R, and effectively communicate their findings through visualizations, short-form writing, and public-facing arguments. By the end of the course, students will be able to produce a publishablequality blog post or data brief suitable for outlets such as Substack, ARC, Christianity Today, or Religion News Service.