Giving Compass' Take:

• Jacob Poushter, Janell Fetterolf, and Christine Tamir unpack the results of a global survey measuring whether people perceive change and their feelings on diversity, gender equality, family life, and the importance of religion.

• What are the dominant feelings about these issues in the areas where you live and work? How can these attitudes help you understand barriers to and opportunities for your giving? 

• Read a gender equality giving guide. 

Is diversity on the rise? Has gender equality increased? Does religion play a more or less important role than in the past? And are family ties stronger or weaker than they used to be? Pew Research Center posed these questions to 30,133 people in 27 countries.

The results are clear on three of these aspects. Medians of around seven-in-ten say their countries have become more diverse and that gender equality has increased over the past 20 years. And roughly six-in-ten across the countries surveyed say that family ties have weakened.

On the importance of religion, there is more variation by country. Overall, a median of 37% say that religion plays a less important role in their countries than it did 20 years ago, while 27% say it plays a more important role.

For all four questions, a sizable portion of the population (about one-in-five) say there has been no change over the past two decades.

These questions measure whether people perceive change. But how do people feel about social and cultural change itself?

To better understand this, we added a follow-up to our initial questions on diversity, gender equality, family ties and religion: Is this a good or bad thing for the country?

The results of this analysis reveal people are strongly in favor of increased gender equality but share more tepid enthusiasm for increased ethnic, religious and racial diversity. And despite secularization trends, most across the 27 countries surveyed do not oppose a more important role for religion in their society.

In addition, roughly half or more in 24 of the countries surveyed say that family ties are weakening, and in all those countries at least half say that this is a bad thing. In Indonesia and the Philippines, people think family ties are strengthening and that this is a good thing. Nigerians are divided on the state of family ties in their country.

Read the full article about global attitudes by Jacob Poushter, Janell Fetterolf, and Christine Tamir at Pew Research Center.