"Do you believe in reincarnation?" (2008 European Values Study)

Here are some cherry picked results (by country) for what percentage of people answered "yes" to Question 31 on the 2008 European Values Study: "Do you believe in reincarnation?" (Numbers in parentheses are total population for each country.)

Latvia 41.9% (2.3M)
Lithuania 37.4% (3.4M)
Ukraine 37.1% (46.3M)
Russian Federation 33.0% (142.0M)
Portugal 31.4% (10.6M)
Estonia 30.7% (1.3M)
Belarus 30.6% (9.9M)
Ireland 30.5% (4.4M)
Austria 28.8% (8.3M)
Switzerland 28.0% (7.6M)
Finland 24.7% (5.3M)
Hungary 23.2% (10.0M)
Spain 23.1% (45.6M)
Serbia 22.6% (7.4M)
France 22.6% (62.3M)
Bosnia-Herzegovina 22.4% (3.8M)
Romania 21.8% (21.5M)
Armenia 21.5% (3.1M)
Albania 19.1% (3.1M)
Netherlands 18.8% (16.4M)
Germany 18.4% (82.1M)
Belgium 17.5% (10.7M)
Azerbaijan 7.1% (8.7M)

From the website of the European Values Study:

The first release of the 2008 European Values Study is now available. It contains data for 39 countries. In autumn 2010, the complete dataset will be available. Go directly to data and downloads.

This fourth wave of the European Values Study covers all countries of Europe, from Iceland to Azerbaijan and from Portugal to Norway, with a population of 100,000 and more. In total, the fieldwork is administered in 46 countries:

Albania, Armenia, Austria, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Belgium, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Georgia, Germany, Great-Britain, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Kosovo, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Macedonia Republic, Malta, Moldova, Montenegro, The Netherlands, Northern Ireland, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Serbia, Slovak Republic, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, Ukraine.

In each country, a random sample was drawn and 1,500 persons were interviewed personally (face-to-face interviews). Almost 70,000 Europeans participated in the European Values Study 2008. This fourth wave has a persistent focus on a broad range of values. Questions with respect to family, work, religious, political and societal values are highly comparable with those in earlier waves (1981, 1990 and 1999). This longitudinal scope of the study offers opportunities to explore trends in time. The data cover a whole generation: almost 30 years. Respondents answered about 250 questions; on average, it took about 70 minutes to complete an interview.

Large efforts were taken to guarantee high scientific quality standards of the survey. First, all existing questions were critically reviewed by a theory group which also proposed new questions and items to be added to the questionnaire. This group also made sure that all questions were standardized between waves and between countries. A serious improvement is the rich set of socio-demographic background variables which was added to the questionnaire, facilitating far reaching analyses of the determinants of values. The council of National Program Directors critically reviewed this process and approved the final master questionnaire. In addition, the translation process, fieldwork procedures and data processing were standardized according to strict guidelines developed by a Methodology Group. More information about these procedures, click here.

The National Program Directors were responsible for the fieldwork in their country. Coordination of the fieldwork was done by EVS at Tilburg University, CEPS/Instead , and GESIS.

Due to the high quality standards, data collection was very costly: almost 6 million Euros. For an overview of the sponsors of the 2008 European Values Study, click here.

Master questionnaire

Methods and sample

Participating countries and country-information

Where to get the data