This article compares the growth of three religious groups, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Seventh-day Adventists, and Jehovah’s Witnesses. All originated in America during the nineteenth century and have since globalized. It begins by using their official membership data to contrast their aggregate growth over time. It then questions the reliability of those official statistics. Noting that each group employs different criteria in selecting who it counts, it employs census data from 54 countries in all regions of the world and five surveys of US adult religious affiliation with adjustments for children as a proxy for an American census to provide a common basis for comparison. It finds consistent patterns, where membership data greatly overstate the number of Mormons, understate the number of Adventists, and also understate the number of Witnesses to an even greater extent. The article then calculates a weighted ratio between official and census data for each group and uses those ratios to estimate their aggregate adherents. This method results in a dramatic reordering of their sizes. Finally, the article accounts for the variations found between the three groups.

中文翻译：

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重新评估摩门教徒、复临信徒和见证人的规模：使用人口普查数据测试会员数据的可靠性并解释发现的不同模式

本文比较了三个宗教团体的成长情况，即耶稣基督后期圣徒教会、基督复临安息日会和耶和华见证人。所有这些都起源于 19 世纪的美国，并从此全球化。它首先使用他们的官方会员数据来对比他们随着时间的推移的总体增长。然后它质疑这些官方统计数据的可靠性。注意到每个群体在选择统计对象时采用不同的标准，它采用了来自世界所有地区 54 个国家的人口普查数据和美国成人宗教信仰的五项调查，并针对儿童进行了调整，作为美国人口普查的代理，以提供共同的基础用于比较。它发现了一致的模式，其中成员数据大大夸大了摩门教徒的数量，低估了复临信徒的数量，并且在更大程度上低估了见证人的数量。然后，文章计算每个群体的官方数据和人口普查数据之间的加权比率，并使用这些比率来估计他们的总体追随者。这种方法会导致对它们的大小进行戏剧性的重新排序。最后，文章解释了三组之间的差异。