If you haven’t already registered yourself with the American Secular Census, and are an American and a nontheist, please go over there and create an account and fill everything out, as much as you can or have time for or feel comfortable with. In fact, even if you did register there already, please go back and sign in to see if there are any new questions for you to complete, because they may have added new important polling questions for everyone to answer (like the gender you identify as, or new options for level if education like “associates/vocational degree”). Likewise if you didn’t have time or inclination to answer all the questions being asked the first time, but would like to now. Or if your answers have changed (e.g. you completed more education, or changed your gender). More questions may be added over time, so if you are a new registrant or a previous one, remember to keep coming back every six months or so to see if there is more to fill out for the benefit of the study (I have asked they start counting how many identify as polyamorous or in an open relationship, for example).

The ASC is gathering a huge amount of data, but you’ll want your own opinions and history and other data to be counted along with everyone else’s (since it’s “the independent national registry of demographic and viewpoint data recorded by Secular Americans,” so if you are a secular American, you should be included). The data is all anonymous, of course, and ASC has a strict privacy policy. There are two links atop the page, one “before you register” and one for registering. Under the former you can see who they want to register and how they manage privacy issues, and also answer other questions.

The ASC just posted a new update this month, “Baseline Achieved–All 50 States, Every Race Now Registered.” There it is explained how the census works, what it’s advantages are, and why it’s important to register and be counted in it. So far they only have a few thousand people counted, and they want to break 10,000. So please help them do that! It’s valuable and important.

Their latest data snapshot shows almost as many women have been counted as men, and half of the counted are under 40; over a quarter are under 30. So a past skewing of the data toward older male members of the movement is fading. But more minorities are needed. Black respondents number less than 1% and the largest minority-counts are for Hispanic (3%) and “Other” (2.7%), and “Other” is not very helpful. Possibly the racial identification options expanded over time, so if you registered as “Other,” maybe go back and check to see if your racial identity is now an option and select it…or if it’s not shown as an option, please contact the site to tell them what your category is that’s missing.