In Sweden, a large majority of the population define themselves as Christians. Based on a representative survey reflecting 7.9 million of the Swedish population, 5.1 million of these define themselves as Christians, with 240,000 of these being very religious.

This statistic shows the result of a survey on religious identification in Sweden in 2017, by type. That year, the largest group of Swedish population (a share of 43 percent) participating in this survey identified themselves as non-practicing Christians. Only nine percent of respondents was practicing Christian, defined by the source as someone who goes to church at least monthly.

This statistic shows the result of a survey conducted in 2017 on the level of knowledge about religion in Sweden. That year, the largest religious knowledge of Swedish population (a share of 86 percent of respondents) had great or some knowledge about Christianity, whereas 14 percent had not much or no knowledge about Christianity. In contrast, only 40 percent of individuals said that they have a great or some knowledge about Judaism.

In 2022, there were 188,000 members of Islamic communities under the umbrella of the Islamic Cooperation Council in Sweden. Additionally, there were over 150,000 members of Orthodox and Eastern Churches. More than half of the Swedish population were members of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Sweden in 2022.

In September 1981 a new Swedish translation of the New Testament was published. The main purpose of this survey is to show the possession and use of the Bible among the Swedish population. Respondents were asked about their interest in issues concerning religion and outlook of life, if they believe in God and about their relation toward the Christian faith, how often they attend church and how often they pray. The major part of the questions addressed people who used to read the Bible. They were asked how and why they read the Bible and which Bible translation they use. Furthermore they were asked about their opinion on the new translation of the New Testament.

The data file belonging to this study contains information about participation in services and worships at approximately 5,900 congregations, corps and religious groups across Sweden during the weekend of 24 - 26 September 1999. The survey was sent to roughly 6,500 congregations, corps and groups and a response rate of around 90% was thus reached. Well over half a million participations were registered during the weekend, in communities spanning over Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Bahá'í, Hinduism, Sikhism, Buddhism and "new movements" including New Age movements, Neopaganism, Neo-Hindu movements, the Church of Scientology etc. Four pieces of information were gathered: 1) day and time of the religious activity, 3) type of religious activity, 3) number of participants, 4) whether the activity was ecumenical or not. Purpose: What did religious Sweden look like just before the turn of the millennium 2000? Answering this question was the purpose of the Sweden Count 2000. More specifically, the study examines the number of visits to congregations and religious societies during a weekend of September 1999. The dataset contains a data file with information on the number of visits to congregations and religious societies in Sweden during the weekend of 24th - 26th September 1999.

Over the past decade, the share of the Swedish population who was a member of the Swedish Church decreased steadily from 70 percent in 2010 to 51 percent in 2024. This underlines the trend that religion is playing a smaller part in people's lives in Sweden. The Church of Sweden is the largest Christian church in Sweden and it was the state church between 1536 and 2000.

This statistic displays the estimated and actual Muslim population share in Denmark and Sweden in 2018. In Denmark, respondents on average guessed that 18 out of every 100 people in Denmark were Muslims. In fact, 4. percent of the Danish population was Muslim in 2018. Swedes estimated 23 percent of every hundred people to be Muslim, but the actual number was 8 percent.

This survey is a not up-to-date version. Please, use the updated version included in the EVS integrated data files. This national dataset is only available for replication purposes and analysis with additional country-specific variables (see ´Further Remarks´).

Two online overviews offer comprehensive metadata on the EVS datasets and variables.

The extended study description for the EVS 2008 provides country-specific information on the origin and outcomes of the national surveys The variable overview of the four EVS waves 1981 1990 1999/2000 and 2008 allows for identifying country specific deviations in the question wording within and across the EVS waves.

These overviews can be found at: Extended Study Description Variable Overview

Moral, religious, societal, political, work, and family values of Europeans.

Topics: 1. Perceptions of life: importance of work, family, friends and acquaintances, leisure time, politics and religion; frequency of political discussions with friends; happiness; self-assessment of own health; memberships and unpaid work (volunteering) in: social welfare services, religious or church organisations, education, or cultural activities, labour unions, political parties, local political actions, human rights, environmental or peace movement, professional associations, youth work, sports clubs, women´s groups, voluntary associations concerned with health or other groups; tolerance towards minorities (people with a criminal record, of a different race, left/right wing extremists, alcohol addicts, large families, emotionally unstable people, Muslims, immigrants, AIDS sufferers, drug addicts, homosexuals, Jews, gypsies and Christians - social distance); trust in people; estimation of people´s fair and helpful behaviour; internal or external control; satisfaction with life.

1. Work: reasons for people to live in need; importance of selected aspects of occupational work; employment status; general work satisfaction; freedom of decision-taking in the job; importance of work (work ethics, scale); important aspects of leisure time; attitude towards following instructions at work without criticism (obedience work); give priority to nationals over foreigners as well as men over women in jobs.

2. Religion: Individual or general clear guidelines for good and evil; religious denomination; current and former religious denomination; current frequency of church attendance and at the age of 12; importance of religious celebration at birth, marriage, and funeral; self-assessment of religiousness; churches give adequate answers to moral questions, problems of family life, spiritual needs and social problems of the country; belief in God, life after death, hell, heaven, sin and re-incarnation; personal God versus spirit or life force; own way of connecting with the divine; interest in the sacred or the supernatural; attitude towards the existence of one true religion; importance of God in one´s life (10-point-scale); experience of comfort and strength from religion and belief; moments of prayer and meditation; frequency of prayers; belief in lucky charms or a talisman (10-point-scale); attitude towards the separation of church and state.

3. Family and marriage: most important criteria for a successful marriage (scale); attitude towards childcare (a child needs a home with father and mother, a woman has to have children to be fulfilled, marriage is an out-dated institution, woman as a single-parent); attitude towards marriage, children, and traditional family structure (scale); attitude towards traditional understanding of one´s role of man and woman in occupation and family (scale); attitude towards: respect and love for parents, parent´s responsibilities for their children and the responsibility of adult children for their parents when they are in need of long-term care; importance of educational goals; attitude towards abortion.

4. Politics and society: political interest; political participation; preference for individual freedom or social equality; self-assessment on a left-right continuum (10-point-scale); self-responsibility or governmental provision; free decision of job-taking of the unemployed or no permission to refuse a job; advantage or harmfulness of competition; liberty of firms or governmental control; equal incomes or incentives for individual efforts; attitude concerning capitalism versus government ownership; postmaterialism (scale); expectation of future development (less emphasis on money and material possessions, greater respect for authority); trust in institutions; satisfaction with democracy; assessment of the political system of the country as good or bad (10-point-scale); preferred type of political system (strong leader, expert decisions, army should rule the country, or democracy); attitude towards democracy (scale).

5. Moral attitudes (scale: claiming state benefits without entitlement, cheating on taxes, joyriding, taking soft drugs, lying, adultery,...

When this study began in the 1940s the researchers set out with the view that a formerly more or less universal Swedish unitary ecclesiastic culture was in the process of dissolving. The socio-economic changes of the early 19th century were believed to have led to religious conceptions differentiating and customs not being taken for granted any more. The scientists held that only small parts remained of an earlier natural and unitary ecclesiastic culture. Based on this view the researchers conducted an extensive project to gather information about those remains of this earlier church life that were still to be found, in the same way that general ethnography conducted research on customs in other areas of life. The researchers were of the opinion that earlier research had ignored the spiritual side of folk life and that this was problematic since it missed an important part of the daily life and ways of thinking of the population that were deeply rooted in Christianity.

Purpose:

To document those ecclesiastic customs and practices which at the time when the study was conducted were considered to be the dwindling left-overs of a former "ecclesiastic unitary culture".

About 5.600 text files containing free-text answers to the questions of the study from respondents from all parts of Sweden. The files are sorted according to diocese and parish. Also included is an accessions register in spreadsheet format. NOTE! The text files are encoded as UTF-8. If the Swedish characters å, ä and ö are not displayed properly you need to change the program's settings to UTF-8.

World Values Survey 2005: Finnish Data studies the respondents' values, attitudes and situation in life with various questions. The data include an oversample of Swedish-speaking population. The respondents rated the importance of various domains in life (e.g. family, work, leisure time). Views were probed on happiness, objectives, satisfaction with life, and whether the respondents felt that they have completely free choice and control over their lives. The survey also investigated whether the respondents belonged to any voluntary organisations or communities. In relation to prejudices against different groups with various characteristics, the respondents were asked which groups they would not like to have as neighbours (e.g. people of a different race, drug addicts, immigrants, sexual minorities). Further questions covered general trust or mistrust of people. There were several questions relating to working life in the survey. One theme pertained to which aspects the respondents would consider to be important if they were looking for a job (e.g. a good income, safety in the workplace). The respondents were asked whether they agreed with statements relating to work and working life. The respondents were also asked whether it is justifiable to favour Finns or men for employees when jobs are scarce. Several questions focused on family, home, marriage, and having and raising children. Further questions charted religious behaviour, beliefs, and whether the respondents belonged to any religious denominations. The respondents were asked to assess the aims of Finnish society and potential future changes in lifestyle. They considered different global problems and objectives to find solutions to them. The respondents' political action was covered by asking, among other things, if they had participated in peaceful demonstrations. Confidence in various institutions in society was examined. The respondents were also asked to assess different political systems and characteristics of democracy. Political inclinations were surveyed, for instance, by asking the respondents to place themselves on the left-right axis and by asking them about voting behaviour. Opinions were also probed on the responsibilities of the individual vs. the responsibilities of the government, competition, science, technology, income disparity, attitudes towards euthanasia, cheating on taxes, accepting a bribe, Finnishness, foreign aid, immigration, and ethnic diversity. The use of computer and different sources of information were investigated as well. The face-to-face interview was followed by a self-completed questionnaire. Finnish conceptions of Swedes were investigated. Firstly, the questionnaire covered the respondents' knowledge of, among others, Swedish population, current and former prime ministers, authors, composers, athletes, and how Sweden fared in the UN's international comparisons measuring standard of living and equality between men and women. Further questions covered the respondents' trips to Sweden and whether they had any Swedish acquaintances. The respondents' opinions on, among others, cooperation between Sweden and Finland regarding culture, politics and economy were charted, as well as their views on Swedish institutions and the characteristics and self-image of Swedes. Finally, the questionnaire examined the attitudes that the respondents, their relatives, and the whole Finnish population have towards Swedes. Background variables included, among others, the respondent's gender, year of birth, marital status, number of children, educational level, main occupation, duration of the possible unemployment, province of residence, type of neighbourhood, household income, and whether or not R lives with his/her parents.

This statistic shows the result of a survey conducted in 2017 on people agreeing that Islam is fundamentally incompatible with Sweden's culture and values. That year, the largest agreement of the Swedish population was church-attending Christians, with a share of 43 percent of respondents. Compared with the religiously unaffiliated reaching 33 percent of individuals it was ten percentage points higher.

According to a survey on religious belief, younger generations of Swedes believed less in God than older generations of Swedes. During the time under consideration, the religious believes of the respondents fluctuated but declined overall. While 60 percent of the 65 to 85-year-olds believed in God in 2010, this was only the case for 42 percent of the respondents in 2022. Interestingly, the share of young people (16 to 29 years) believing in God increased in 2021 and 2022.

This survey is the Swedish part of the 2004 'International Social Survey Program' (ISSP), and it is the first ISSP-survey focusing on citizenship.

There are different opinions as to what it takes to be a good citizen and the respondents were asked to indicate on a scale 1 to 7 how important different behaviours are to make a good citizen. Respondents were also asked if different groups in society, such as religious extremists, people who want to overthrow the government by force, or people prejudiced against any racial or ethnic group, should be allowed to hold public meetings. Other questions dealt with different forms of political action that people can take. Respondents had to indicate whether they had signed a petition; boycotted or deliberately bought certain products; demonstrated; attended a political meeting; contacted a politician or civil servant to express a certain view; or joined an Internet political forum, in the past year or in a more distant past. If the respondent never had done an activity, they were asked if they might do it or would never under any circumstances do it. Respondents also had to indicate if they belonged and actively participated in different kinds of groups and associations. On a scale 1 to 7 respondents had to give their opinion on people´s rights in a democracy. Demographic variables include age, sex, education, marital status, personal and family income, employment status, household size and composition, occupation, religion, social class, union membership, political orientation, and demographics of community.

Purpose:

ISSP aims to design and implement internationally comparable attitude surveys. The study in 2004 investigating Social Citizenship.

The European Values Study is a large-scale, cross-national and longitudinal survey research program on how Europeans think about family, work, religion, politics, and society. Repeated every nine years in an increasing number of countries, the survey provides insights into the ideas, beliefs, preferences, attitudes, values, and opinions of citizens all over Europe.

As previous waves conducted in 1981, 1990, 1999, 2008, the fifth EVS wave maintains a persistent focus on a broad range of values. Questions are highly comparable across waves and regions, making EVS suitable for research aimed at studying trends over time.

The new wave has seen a strengthening of the methodological standards. The full release of the EVS 2017 includes data and documentation of altogether 37 participating countries. For more information, please go to the EVS website.

Morale, religious, societal, political, work, and family values of Europeans.

Topics: 1. Perceptions of life: importance of work, family, friends and acquaintances, leisure time, politics and religion; happiness; self-assessment of own health; memberships in voluntary organisations (religious or church organisations, cultural activities, trade unions, political parties or groups, environment, ecology, animal rights, professional associations, sports, recreation, or other groups, none); active or inactive membership of humanitarian or charitable organisation, consumer organisation, self-help group or mutual aid; voluntary work in the last six months; tolerance towards minorities (people of a different race, heavy drinkers, immigrants, foreign workers, drug addicts, homosexuals, Christians, Muslims, Jews, and gypsies - social distance); trust in people; estimation of people´s fair and helpful behavior; internal or external control; satisfaction with life; importance of educational goals: desirable qualities of children.

1. Work: attitude towards work (job needed to develop talents, receiving money without working is humiliating, people turn lazy not working, work is a duty towards society, work always comes first); importance of selected aspects of occupational work; give priority to nationals over foreigners as well as men over women in jobs.

2. Religion and morale: religious denomination; current and former religious denomination; current frequency of church attendance and at the age of 12; self-assessment of religiousness; belief in God, life after death, hell, heaven, and re-incarnation; personal god vs. spirit or life force; importance of God in one´s life (10-point-scale); frequency of prayers; morale attitudes (scale: claiming state benefits without entitlement, cheating on taxes, taking soft drugs, accepting a bribe, homosexuality, abortion, divorce, euthanasia, suicide, paying cash to avoid taxes, casual sex, avoiding fare on public transport, prostitution, in-vitro fertilization, political violence, death penalty).

3. Family: trust in family; most important criteria for a successful marriage or partnership (faithfulness, adequate income, good housing, sharing household chores, children, time for friends and personal hobbies); marriage is an outdated institution; attitude towards traditional understanding of one´s role of man and woman in occupation and family (gender roles); homosexual couples are as good parents as other couples; duty towards society to have children; responsibility of adult children for their parents when they are in need of long-term care; to make own parents proud is a main goal in life.

4. Politics and society: political interest; political participation; preference for individual freedom or social equality; self-assessment on a left-right continuum (10-point-scale) (left-right self-placement); individual vs. state responsibility for providing; take any job vs. right to refuse job when unemployed; competition good vs. harmful for people; equal incomes vs. incentives for individual effort; private vs. government ownership of business and industry; postmaterialism (scale); most important aims of the country for the next ten years; willingness to fight for the country; expectation of future development (less importance placed on work and greater respect for authority); trust in institutions; essential characteristics of democracy; importance of democracy for the respondent; rating democracy in own country; satisfaction with the political system in the country; preferred type of political system (strong leader, expert decisions, army should r...

Since 1986 the research project ´Samhälle Opinion Massmedia´ (SOM) has been carrying out an annual nation-wide survey of Swedish opinions. This is accordingly the ninth survey in this series. The questionnaire was divided into six subject fields: mass media; politics and society; energy, nuclear power and environment; Sweden and the rest of the world; leisure; and background. Most of the questions are replications of questions asked in one or several previous SOM-surveys. New questions dealt with equality between men and women; Sweden´s future relation to the European Union; confidence in various groups concerning information about the European Union; the importance of various issues for the respondent´s own opinion on a Swedish membership of the European Union; opinion on establishment of various activities in the respondent´s own municipality; the rights of various ethnical groups to look after their interests; and radio channels listened to. The respondents also had to place the political parties on a scale measuring attitude towards christian values.

Purpose:

The main purpose is to establish time series that enable researchers to analyse how various changes in society affect people's attitudes and behaviour.

In 2022, there were 188,000 members of Islamic communities under the umbrella of the Islamic Cooperation Council in Sweden. The number of Muslims in Sweden increased steadily since 2014, when there were estimated to be around 110,000 Muslims in the country. The exact number of believing Muslims in Sweden is difficult to estimate, particularly as there may be people following Islam who are not a member of an Islamic community.

This study is no longer up to date. Please, use the new study ZA7504: EVS Trend File 1981-2017 – Sensitive Dataset . The latest data file is also recommended as an improved update for analyses due to the improvements and data revisions.

Moral, religious, societal, political, work, and family values of Europeans. Compilation of the data sets from 1981, 1990, 1999, and 2008.

The variable overview allows for comparisons of trend variables of the four EVS waves 1981, 1990, 1999, and 2008. In addition, comparisons of original question texts across the waves 1999 and 2008 are supported.

Topics: 1. Perceptions of life: importance of work, family, friends and acquaintances, leisure time, politics and religion (in Sweden: service to others); frequency of political discussions with friends; happiness; self-assessment of own health; feelings of: excitement or interest, restlessness, pride because of compliments, loneliness, joy about completing a thing, boredom, feeling good, depressed or unhappy, managing everything, sadness because of criticism; feelings of the respondent at home: relaxation, anxiety, happiness, aggression or safety.

1. Leisure: way of spending leisure time and definition of leisure; partners for leisure time: alone, with family, friends, at busy places, colleagues, people at churches or at sport and culture; frequency of political discussions with friends and political opinion leadership; memberships and unpaid work (volunteering) in: social welfare services, religious or church organisations, education, or cultural activities, trade unions, political parties, local political actions, human rights, environmental or peace movement, professional associations, youth work, sports clubs, women´s groups, voluntary associations concerned with health consumption or other groups; motives for volunteering; aversion to people with other setting; feelings of loneliness.

2. Work: reasons for people to live in need; importance of selected aspects of occupational work; employment status; general work satisfaction; freedom of decision-making in the job; importance of work (work ethics, scale); important aspects of leisure time; attitude towards following instructions at work without criticism (obedience work); jobs scarce: give priority to nationals over foreigners as well as men over women in jobs, able bodied people over handicapped people and forced retirement for the elderly; satisfaction with the financial situation of the household and expected situation in a year.

Work Environment: work orientation and aspects of job satisfaction; importance of selected characteristics of professional work: good pay, little pressure, job security, respectable activity, flexible working hours, ability to show initiative, a lot of vacation, meeting objectives, responsibility, interesting work, meeting one´s own skills, nice colleagues, good career opportunities, serving society, contact with people, good physical conditions of work and weekend leisure, looking forward to work after the weekend, pride of one´s work, family friendly, have a say, people treated equally; perceived exploitation in the workplace; general job satisfaction (scale); satisfaction with job security; use of paid days off: look for additional salaried work, training, meeting with friends and family, additional working against boredom, voluntary work, hobbies, running one´s own business, relaxation.

1. Religion: deism or nihilism; opinion about good and evil in everyone; feel remorse; being worth risking life for: own country, life of another person, justice, freedom, peace, religion; individual or general clear guidelines for good and evil; religious denomination; current and former religious denomination; raised religiously; current frequency of church attendance and at the age of 12; importance of religious celebration at birth, marriage and funeral; self-assessment of religiousness; churches give adequate answers to moral questions, problems of family life, spiritual needs and social problems of the country; assessment of the importance of religion for the future; attitude towards the role of the Church in political issues (scale); belief in God, life after death, soul, hell, heaven, sin, telepathy, reincarnation, angels, devil, resurrection from the dead; stick to religion vs. explore different traditions; personal God versus spirit or life force; own way of connecting with the divine; interest in the sacred or the supernatural; attitude towards the existence of one true religion; importance of God in one´s life (10-point-scalometer); experience of comfort and strength from religion and belief; moments of prayer and meditation; frequency of prayers; approval or rejection of the single 10 bids by the respondents and most people; supernatural experiences: feeling of connection with someone far away, seeing events that happened far away, felt in touch with someone dead, proximity to a powerful life force, change in the way of...

Suède: Non religious people as percent of the population: Pour cet indicateur, The Cline Center for Democracy fournit des données pour la Suède de à . La valeur moyenne pour Suède pendant cette période était de pour cent avec un minimum de pour cent en et un maximum de pour cent en .

The share of Swedes who believe in God declined continuously since 2010. While 47 percent of the respondents believed in God in 2010, the share had dropped by 14 percentage points in 2024, amounting to 33 percent.