The China Religion Survey (CRS）is a large nation-wide survey directed by the National Survey Research Center (NSRC) at Renmin University of China. This is the first nationally representative surveyon religious institutions, which collects data systematically on individual, institutional and regional levels.

The 2013-2015 wave of CRS concentrates on religious venues and the religious landscape at the county level. It includes two surveys: the religious venue survey and the county religious landscape survey. We use a probability proportional to size (PPS) sampling method to select our samples, and county is our primary sampling unit (PSU). In this wave of CRS, we have selected around 5000 religious venues from 243 counties in 31 provinces.Our samples are nationally represenatative. We not only interview religious leaders but also governmental officials who are in charge of religious affairs.

The CRS is aimed to document the current situation of religious venuesand the trends of their developments, to collect data systematically in all aspects about Chinese religions, to summarize the pattern of religious development in transitional China, and to provide high quality data for academic research and policy-making.

The key features of CRS are as follow:

(1) Gobally comparable religious modules and localized wording

(2)  Cover 10% of counties in China,and oversample on minority areas and the top 5 most         religious counties

(3)   Concentrate on four main dimensions: organization, religiosity, social interactions and church-state relations

(4)    Include all religious venues in the five lagrest metropolitans

(5)     A panel survey which systematically documents religious change in China