Soliciting prayer for the absent, measuring their social worth: Prayer requests for the deployed and the incarcerated

This article uses novel data – online prayer requests for incarcerated and deployed individuals – to investigate how individuals evaluate the social worth of absent loved ones. Results from overdispersed Poisson regression models show that describing incarceration as central to the absent individual's identity in prayer requests is associated with a more negative assessment of the incarcerated, while mentioning religious faith is associated with a positive evaluation. In contrast, seeing military deployment as central to the absent individual's identity promotes a positive assessment of the deployed, while missing joyous events is associated with a negative estimation. Results also demonstrate the strength of norms against criticizing deployed individuals. Taken together, these results show the usefulness of online data for scientific research – especially for those interested in individuals that may be difficult to find or hesitant to talk to researchers, or fear censure for some reason.