As a sociologist of religion Poloma has used her personal experiences as a charismatic Roman Catholic to launch various research projects.
[10] Poloma's research on prayer (c.f., Varieties of Prayer with the renowned pollster George H. Gallup Jr.[11]) has served as a bridge between Pentecostal spirituality and common spiritual experiences of American Christians through data collected in two national surveys.
[12] Through the use of both qualitative and quantitative measures to explore the experiential dimension of religion, Poloma was able to mine research nuggets that suggested religious experience does indeed impact human behavior.
For the past five years she has collaborated with some twenty other colleagues in the John Templeton Foundation-sponsored Flame of Love Project (www.godlyloveproject.org) to develop a model of “Godly Love” that demonstrates the dynamic process in which experiences of the divine contribute to a better understanding human benevolence.
Major findings from this research are found in Matthew T. Lee, Margaret M. Poloma, and Stephen G. Post, The Heart of Religion (Oxford University Press, 2013).