What you can work with today
The public archive contains original report charts, contemporary commentary and a downloadable transcription of 22 historical homepage captures. Each recovered observation links to its source. This is enough to investigate archival provenance, the communication of indices and the limits of reconstruction.
It is not enough to reproduce the historical algorithm or perform a complete individual-level event study. The original vote database, complete daily series and verified country sample sizes are not currently available. The relaunch has not begun collecting new votes.
Four concrete collaboration tracks
Measurement and interpretation
Study what people believe they are rating when they answer the god question. Cognitive interviews and a carefully designed pilot could distinguish perceived fortune, religious judgement, current mood and playful participation. The aim would be to learn what the response means before assigning it a broader label.
Cross-cultural comparison
Examine whether translations, scale labels and local interpretations change the task. A useful outcome could be a documented translation procedure and evidence about comparability, rather than a premature ranking of countries.
News, attention and participation
Test how recruitment sources, news exposure and repeat participation relate to responses. A prospective design could separate audience turnover from changes among returning participants and include events chosen before looking at results.
Digital history and reproducibility
Recover additional captures, investigate calculation changes and preserve original source material with provenance. This track can begin with the public archive without access to personal records.
Design the study before collecting its data
A proposal should specify the research question, target population, recruitment plan, variables, time period, analysis approach and expected outputs. If people will be recruited or followed, the appropriate consent, privacy and ethics arrangements must be agreed before collection begins.
We are interested in methods that make limitations visible: pre-specified event windows, sensitivity checks, transparent exclusions, documented changes and publication of null results. A high-volume website is not automatically a validated research panel.
A practical first conversation
Email info@ratethegod.com with your institution or team, the question you want to answer, the data you would need and the contribution you can make. Please say whether your proposal concerns the historical archive or a future pilot.
No institutional partnerships, peer-reviewed findings or research-access agreements are being claimed on this page. We are opening a conversation, not announcing a completed research programme. Access to future data, publication terms and resource needs will need to be agreed for each collaboration.