This file assembles data from multiple sources on 256 countries and territories, and also aggregates this data globally and by 22 world regions. The file presents most of the data available on the ARDA National Profiles as of 2018 in a single downloadable dataset. Many of the measures are from the ARDA's coding of the 2008 US State Department's International Religious Freedom (IRF) Reports. This coding produced data on 198 different countries and territories (see the Summary file for the International Religious Freedom Data, 2008 for a list of countries coded, available for download from the ARDA), but excluded the United States. In addition, this project assembled (with permission) other cross-national measures of interest to researchers on religion, economics, and politics. They include adherent information from the World Christian Database, scales from Freedom House, the Religion and State Project, the Center for Systemic Peace, the Heritage Foundation, the Correlates of War Project, the Varieties of Democracy Project, the CIRI Human Rights Data Project, and various socio-economic measures from the United Nations, World Bank, and the CIA's World Factbook. The source of each variable in this dataset is acknowledged in the variable's description, except in the case of those variables generated by ARDA researchers' coding of the Department of State's IRF Reports.

This file assembles data from multiple sources, but many of the measures are from the ARDA's coding of the 2003 US State Department's International Religious Freedom Reports. This coding produced data on 195 different countries and territories (see Grim and Finke 2006 for a list of countries coded), but excluded the United States. Additional data on religious regulation and favoritism in the smaller countries not covered by the State Department Reports were provided by researchers at the World Christian Database. In addition, this project assembled (with permission) other cross-national measures of interest to researchers on religion, economics, and politics. They include adherent information from the World Christian Database, scales from Freedom House and the Heritage Foundation, and various socio-economic measures from the United Nations. Measures for religious persecution (AESTIMA) and ethnic identity (DETHNIC) were added to this file in August 2007.

(Note: This dataset was previously available for download under the title "Cross-National Data: Religion Indexes, Religious Adherents, and Other Data.")

The Religious Characteristics of States Dataset (RCS) was created to fulfill the unmet need for a dataset on the religious dimensions of countries of the world, with the state-year as the unit of observation. The third phase, Chief Executives' Religions, provides data on religious affiliations of countries' 'chief executives,' i.e., their presidents, prime ministers, or other heads of state/government exercising largely real, not ceremonial, political power. The dataset, like others in the RCS data project, is designed expressly for easy merger with datasets of the Correlates of War and Polity projects, datasets by the United Nations, the Religion And State datasets by Jonathan Fox, and the ARDA national profiles.

The RCS-Dem dataset reports estimates of religious demographics, both country by country and region by region. RCS was created to fulfill the unmet need for a dataset on the religious dimensions of countries of the world, with the state-year as the unit of observation. It covers 220 independent states, 26 selected substate entities, and 41 geographically separated dependencies, for every year from 2015 back to 1900 and often 1800 (more than 42,000 state-years). It estimates populations and percentages of adherents of 100 religious denominations including second level subdivisions within Christianity and Islam, along with several complex categories such as 'Western Christianity.' RCS is designed for easy merger with datasets of the Correlates of War and Polity projects, datasets by the United Nations, the Religion And State datasets by Jonathan Fox, and the ARDA national profiles.