Author Archives: Siobhan McAndrew

Stephen Bullivant on contemporary Catholicism

It was a great pleasure to see the launch of Stephen Bullivant’s report, ‘Contemporary Catholicism in England and Wales‘, at the House of Commons on 24 May 2016. I first heard of Stephen’s interest in a data-driven approach to the … Continue reading

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Religiosity and Secularity in the 1957 Youth Research Council Survey

The survey was motivated by the desire of the Young Christian Workers and the Newman Demographic Survey to investigate religiosity and religious practice among young people during their formative years. In this post I’ll provide examples of individual responses providing qualitative detail.

There is a great deal of evidence of secularity, with very straightforward replies to that Continue reading

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The 1957 Youth Research Council Survey of Young People’s Religion and Lifestyles

It’s my pleasure to announce the publication online of a survey dataset, the 1957 Youth Research Council Survey of Young People’s Religion and Lifestyles (SN 7933). Continue reading

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How Typical was Thatcher?

In the wake of her passing, there has been a good deal of interest in the late Baroness’ religious background and convictions, and the extent to which these drove her political ideology. But how typical was her choice to convert to Anglicanism in adulthood? Continue reading

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What Anglicans (and others) think about homosexuality and disestablishment

Earlier today, the Church of England responded to the Government’s proposals to introduce same-sex marriage. In view of the discussion generated by the response, it is worth examining what Anglicans themselves think about gay relationships. BRIN correspondent Ben Clements, based at the University of Leicester, has recently looked at data from the British Social Attitudes surveys and the European Values Surveys to see how attitudes to homosexual relationship have changed over the past three decades or so. Continue reading

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Developing BRIN

Those visiting the site regularly will notice that this weekend, and over the next few days, the site is being rebuilt. We are migrating the content to the WordPress platform, which has been powering this ‘News’ section for almost two years. Continue reading

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Does Christianity Have A Future?

BRIN readers who happen to catch this post before 10.25pm this evening (Sunday 17 April) may be interested in tonight’s programme, DOES CHRISTIANITY HAVE A FUTURE? on BBC1. Continue reading

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Trends in Anglican Confirmations, 1872-2009

There has been some discussion in the press regarding Kate Middleton’s recent confirmation as an Anglican, and so I thought I would look up the extant data. Continue reading

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Religious Affiliation and Volunteering

This post is just to flag up the release of the most recent Taking Part in England dataset, covering January-December 2010. This survey is sponsored by the Department of Culture, Media and Sport and asks an unusually large sample their leisure and cultural pursuits. It also asks questions about friendships, political participation, and volunteering.
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Religious Affiliation by Birth Decade

Looking at the pooled British Social Attitudes 1983-2008 sample, I wanted to see how religious affiliation varies by birth decade in England, Scotland and Wales, and particularly how younger birth cohorts compare with older birth cohorts.
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