Religion

This is a person’s current religious denomination or body that they belong to, or if the person does not have a religion, ‘No Religion’. No determination is made about whether a person was a practising member of a religion. 

Religion is a voluntary question and 6.2% of the population did not provide a response. Please be aware that when we state percentages these are out of the whole population, not just those that provided a response. Our approach to imputation is also different for voluntary questions. Not stating a religion is considered to be a valid response, so we do not impute a religion for those who responded to the census but did not answer the religion question. However, we do impute religion for those who did not respond at all to the census. 'Not stated’ is one of the values that can be imputed for religion. More information on our edit and imputation method is available on the Scotland’s Census website.

Total number of categories 13

Question 21 - What religion, religious denomination or
body do you belong to? 

• None
• Church of Scotland
• Roman Catholic
• Other Christian, please write in below:
• Muslim, write in denomination or school below:
• Hindu
• Buddhist
• Sikh
• Jewish
• Pagan
• Another religion or body, please write in

Data on religion is widely used for equality monitoring, to identify particular religious groups and to better understand their needs and characteristics, for planning of services and for research and by special interest groups.

The religion question asked in Scotland's Census 2022 was similar to that asked in 2011, with an additional response option added for "Pagan".

The question asked in England & Wales in 2022 was similar, however the response options were simplified. The England & Wales question asked:

"What is your Religion?

• No Religion
• Christian (including Church of England, Catholic, Protestant, and all other Christian denominations)
• Buddhist
• Hindu
• Jewish
• Muslim
• Sikh
• Any other religion, write in"

This is a person’s current religious denomination or body that they belong to, or if the person does not have a religion, ‘None’. No determination is made about whether a person was a practising member of a religion. Unlike other census questions where missing answers are imputed, this question was voluntary, and where no answer was provided the response is categorised as ‘not stated’.

These are simplified classifications we used to create outputs for the 2011 census.

View a full list of all possible religion classifications. 

Total number of categories 12

Each response option will have a corresponding index entry number on the Religion Index. For ticks only, these index numbers were output to Religion1.

Text responses were matched to the Religion Index and the specified index entry number was output to Religion2. If the text was misspelt or written slightly different to that of the index, coding specifications were used to attempt to identify the relevant index entry number to output to Religion2.

Religion is the “overall” output and will be the same as either Religion1 or Religion2.

For text that is an uncodeable output, a code of VVV is given to Religion2.

Religion (Standard variable)

In the statistical bulletin for release 2A, the data for 2001 for the ‘Other religion’ and ‘No religion’ categories were amended to match the 2011 coding, as some responses which were coded as ‘Other religion’ in 2001 were coded as ‘No religion’ in 2011.  

These questions ask the person to record their religion. In Scotland there is a separate question asking for the religion the person was brought up in. In Northern Ireland, people who do not regard themselves as belonging to any religion are asked to record the religion they were brought up in. A write-in is provided where the person's religion is not provided as a tick box response. A detailed list of codes was used to code the write-in responses for England and Wales and Northern Ireland. This list contains some codes, added during processing, which are only applicable in Northern Ireland. Write-in answers are not coded in Scotland.

Missing answers will not be imputed so the classifications include a 'not stated' category.

Total number of categories 11