Harvard/MGH Center on Genomics, Vulnerable Populations, and Health Disparities

R|S Atlas is an open-source, online data resource that provides a comprehensive map of all religion or spirituality (R|S) survey questions available within 20 highly-regarded prospective cohort studies in the U.S. R|S Atlas was developed and is maintained by the Harvard/MGH Center on Genomics, Vulnerable Populations, and Health Disparities (Alexandra E. Shields, Director) under the auspices of the Spirituality and Health Initiative, and made possible through a grant from the John Templeton Foundation.

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R|S Atlas is a tool to facilitate high-quality, prospective analyses using R|S survey questions in prospective cohort studies in the U.S. While the number of R|S survey questions asked in our participating cohorts can be fairly limited at times, the goal is to maximize the utility of existing data to advance understanding of the complex relationships of R|S beliefs, practices, and experiences with human health. Given that many such study designs will require pooling data across several cohorts, R|S Atlas will prove to be a valuable resource to researchers seeking to identify cohorts with similar data on R|S, as well as cohorts who meet additional study criteria (e.g., racial/ethnic composition, availability of blood or DNA samples, age or sex of cohort participants, etc.).

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Data available in R|S Atlas include:

• All R|S survey questions asked in our 20 participating national cohort studies (including ancillary studies of these cohorts) from the inception of each cohort

• Detailed documentation of each R|S question (e.g., its source, number of times asked, number of participants asked, whether it includes only one question or all questions from an established scale)

• Citations of publications using these R|S questions to date

• Additional data on each cohort, including a description of the cohort; the number of participants; select characteristics of participants (e.g., age, sex, race/ethnicity); the availability of blood and DNA; whether or not the cohort has been geocoded; and additional information useful for identifying potential collaborators

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Click here to explore the R|S Atlas query tool

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* Due to occasional surges in traffic in the MGH web infrastructure, periodic outages with the R|S Atlas website are possible. If you receive an error when you try to visit the R|S Atlas site, please try again, as it should be resolved within hours.