Labour Force Survey

Posted on March 3, 2012 by Clive D. Field

Professing Christians in this country are declining by one and a half percentage points annually and, on present trends, ‘the number of people with no religion will overtake the number of Christians in Great Britain in twenty years’. This prediction is made in an article by Oliver Hawkins in the January 2012 edition of Social Indicators (House of Commons Library Research Paper 12/05), and updated on 14 February 2012. It is available at:

http://www.parliament.uk/briefing-papers/SN06189

The analysis is based on the Government’s Labour Force Survey (LFS), a quarterly study of around 50,000 households (and 100,000 individuals), for 2004 to 2010 inclusive. The religion question asked in Great Britain (different wording was used in Northern Ireland, which is excluded from the following figures) was: ‘What is your religion even if you are not currently practising?’ Responses covered persons of all ages (since proxy replies were permitted).

The data indicate that between the fourth quarters of 2004 and 2010 professing Christians in Britain fell by 3,410,000 (or 8%), from 44,820,000 to 41,410,000, or by 570,000 each year. At the same time, the number of people with no religion increased by 4,380,000 (49%), from 9,010,000 to 13,390,000, equivalent to 730,000 per annum. Starting from lower baselines, there was also significant six-year growth in Buddhists (74%), Hindus (43%), Muslims (37%), and religions other than the main world faiths (57%).

The decline in Christian market share, from 78% in 2004 to 69% in 2010, would have been still more serious had it not been for the effect of net migration (which was at a substantial level during this period). Among those born outside the UK there were 730,000 more Christians in 2010 than in 2004, partly offsetting the fall of 4,140,000 in UK-born Christians. People with no religion were the most likely to be born in the UK (94%), albeit net migration also improved their numbers by 320,000 between 2004 and 2010. The majority of Hindus, Buddhists and Muslims were born outside the country, with migration accounting for 43% of the growth in the Muslim population.

From 2011 the LFS dropped the qualifying phrase ‘even if you are not currently practising’ and also altered the running order of response categories, moving no religion from last to first position. These changes had an immediate effect, comparing the fourth quarter of the 2010 LFS with the first quarter of 2011. In particular, the number of professing Christians reduced by a further 2,800,000 and of persons with no religion rose by 2,750,000, a 5% swing in religious allegiance. This is a graphic reminder of the effect which question formulation can have on religious data.

 

Posted in Measuring religion, Official data, Survey news | Tagged , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Islamophobia in the West

Posted on February 29, 2012 by Clive D. Field

Islamophobia in the West: Measuring and Explaining Individual Attitudes, edited by Marc Helbling (of the Social Science Research Centre, Berlin) was published by Routledge on 16 February 2012 (ISBN 978-0-415-59444-8, hardback, £80). The book comprises 13 essays exploring the views of ordinary citizens toward Islam and Muslims as revealed by survey evidence.

Following an introduction by the editor (chapter 1), including discussion of the complex definitional issues, there are case studies of Islamophobia in the United States (chapters 2 and 12), Great Britain (3, 11 and 13 – each summarized below), Norway (4), Sweden (5), Spain (6), Switzerland (7), and The Netherlands (8, 9 and 10). The full contents table can be viewed at:

http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9780415594448/

Chapter 3 (pp. 39-55): Erik Bleich and Rahsaan Maxwell, ‘Assessing Islamophobia in Britain: where do Muslims really stand?’

This is a study not merely of national attitudes to Muslims but also of Muslim attitudes toward British society. The principal source is the Government’s Citizenship Surveys from 2001 to 2009, with some subsidiary use of the Pew Global Attitudes Surveys and Eurobarometers. The authors conclude that ‘Islamophobia may be a real challenge and an obstacle to intergroup harmony but is not yet the most significant cleavage defining the nature of group divisions in British society’. They likewise highlight that ‘despite the tense atmosphere in contemporary British society, Muslims have remarkably high levels of positive national identification and political trust’.

Chapter 11 (pp. 147-61): Clive Field, ‘Revisiting Islamophobia in contemporary Britain, 2007-10’

The attitudes of ordinary Britons towards Muslims and Islam are reviewed through 64 opinion polls conducted in 2007-10. Comparisons are also drawn with 2001-06 (the subject of an earlier article by the author). Islamophobia is shown to be multi-layered, affecting one-fifth to three-quarters of adults, the actual level depending on topic. It is said to be undoubtedly increasing, albeit still less pervasive than other western European countries, and is by far the commonest form of religious prejudice in Britain. Muslims are seen as slow to integrate, to have a qualified patriotism and, sometimes, to be drawn to extremism. Negativity is found to be disproportionately concentrated among men, the elderly, the lowest social groups and Conservative voters.

Chapter 13 (pp. 179-89): Marco Cinnirella, ‘Think “terrorist”, think “Muslim”? Social-psychological mechanisms explaining anti-Islamic prejudice’

The author ‘draws upon an eclectic mix of different theoretical traditions from social psychology’, in particular social representations theory, terror management theory, social identity theory, self-categorization theory, and intergroup threat theory. Their aggregate applicability to Islamophobia is demonstrated by two small-scale research projects among British students, in 2006 and 2008. The first project revealed that ‘exposure to media social representations of Muslims is likely to be a causal factor in Islamophobia’. The second discovered that perceived cultural threat from Muslims, realistic threat from Islamist terrorism and strength of British national identity were all predictors of Islamophobia.

This post’s inevitable focus on the three chapters affecting Islamophobia in Britain is not to imply that the remainder of the volume should be ignored by BRIN users. Several authors provide invaluable comparative insights, while chapter 2 offers us an Anti-Muslim Prejudice scale developed for the American context. This can be compared and contrasted with the equivalent scales which have been proposed in the UK by Adrian Brockett, Andrew Village and Leslie Francis (the Attitude toward Muslim Proximity Index in 2009 and the Outgroup Prejudice Index in 2010).

 

Posted in Attitudes towards Religion, Measuring religion, Religion and Ethnicity, Religion and Politics, Religion in public debate | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

ONS Opinions Survey Religion Module

Posted on January 24, 2012 by Clive D. Field

On 18 January 2012 the Economic and Social Data Service released for secondary analysis the dataset from the ‘ONS Opinions Survey, Census Religion Module, April, May, June and July, 2009’. This is available, under special licence access to approved UK researchers (accredited by the UK Statistics Authority), as SN 6938. For further information, see:

http://www.esds.ac.uk/findingData/snDescription.asp?sn=6938

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) Opinions Survey (OPN), previously known as the ONS Omnibus Survey, is a regular, multi-purpose study carried out by the ONS Social Survey Division. It started operating commercially in 1990 and was conducted for eight months of the year until April 2005 and monthly thereafter.

A census religion module (MCG/MCGb) was included in the OPN for April-July 2009 inclusive, as part of the final testing of question-wording for the 2011 population census. Citizenship was also covered in the same module (in April and May). A total of 4,235 Britons aged 16 and over living in private households were interviewed face-to-face.

The question which was tested on religion is one which is not often used in sample surveys. ‘Which of these best describes you?’ was followed by eight reply options: Christian, Buddhist, Hindu, Jewish, Muslim, Sikh, any other religion (specify), and no religion. In the May and July 2009 surveys no religion was made the first option, ahead of Christian. Any spontaneous comments made by the respondent to the question were also captured by the interviewer.

As well as through the OPN, ‘Which of these best describes you?’ was evaluated through: a postal test in England in March 2009 (with no religion given as the first option), cognitive testing, and engagement with key stakeholders. For comparative purposes, another question – ‘What is your religion, even if not currently practising?’ – was included in the core questionnaire for the April-July 2009 OPN.

In the end, ONS decided against using ‘Which of these best describes you?’ in the 2011 census and in favour of ‘What is your religion?’ – which many commentators regard as potentially leading. The ONS rationale for doing so is set out in the October 2009 report Final Recommended Questions for the 2011 Census in England and Wales: Religion, which is available through the Government web archive at:

http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20110109084035/http://www.ons.gov.uk/census/2011-census/2011-census-questionnaire-content/question-and-content-recommendations-for-2011/index.html

In Annex A of this document ONS tabulated the results from the core and module questions on religion in the April-July 2009 OPN. ‘Which of these best describes you?’ was found to increase the proportion professing no religion compared with ‘What is your religion, even if not currently practising?’ But the difference was especially noticeable in May and July, when no religion headed the list of options. In this instance, perhaps it was the running order of options more than the question-wording per se which most affected the results.

So, these April-July 2009 OPN data do not simply have historical significance. They remain important methodologically in demonstrating how variations in questionnaire design can impact upon the statistics generated by enquiries into religious affiliation. Doubtless, the first results from the religion question in the 2011 census, when they come, will reignite the debate about what is the ‘right’ way to formulate this question.

 

Posted in Measuring religion, Official data, Survey news | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Restudies of Religion in English and Welsh Communities

Posted on October 23, 2011 by Clive D. Field

Steve Bruce, who has been Professor of Sociology at the University of Aberdeen since 1991, has been engaged since 2007 on an extended reappraisal of religious change in Britain since 1945, made possible by the award of a Leverhulme Trust senior research fellowship.

A novel feature of his project has been micro-analyses of institutional and ‘popular’ religion, based on a series of restudies of classical post-war sociological surveys of individual communities. Within the last year, Bruce has had published four articles in academic journals derived from these restudies.

Bibliographical details are shown below, including a link to the pay-per-view online version. Some indication is also given of the principal religious statistics which Bruce has compiled in each case. However, it should be noted that the articles are also rich mines of qualitative data.

‘Religion in Rural Wales: Four Restudies’, Contemporary Wales, Vol. 23, 2010, pp. 219-39.

http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/uwp/cowa/2010/00000023/00000001/art00015

Restudies of Llanfrothen Ffestiniog, Gwynedd by Isabel Emmett in A North Wales Village (1964); Llanuwchllyn-Llangower, Gwynedd by Trefor Owen in ‘Chapel and Community in Glan-llyn, Merioneth’, Welsh Rural Communities, eds Elwyn Davies and Alwyn Rees (1960); Llanfihangel yng Ngwynfa, Powys by Alwyn Rees in Life in a Welsh Countryside (1950); and Llansantffraid Glyn Ceiriog, Wrexham by Ronald Frankenberg in Village on the Border (1957). All four communities were located in Welsh-speaking areas of north and mid Wales.

Includes tables of religious affiliation in Llanfrothen in 1962 and 2009; Llanuwchllyn-Llangower in 1950, 1990, 2002 and 2007; Llanfihangel yng Ngwynfa in 1940, 1997 and 2008; and Llansantffraid Glyn Ceiriog in 1953 and 2008. Also a table of religious affiliation and social correlates for all four communities from the 2001 census.

‘A Sociology Classic Revisited: Religion in Banbury’, Sociological Review, Vol. 59, No. 2, May 2011, pp. 201-22.

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-954X.2011.02003.x/abstract

Restudy of Banbury, Oxfordshire by Margaret Stacey in Tradition and Change (1960) and Margaret Stacey, Eric Batstone, Colin Bell and Anne Murcott, Power, Persistence and Change (1975).

Includes tables of church adherence and membership in 1950 and 1967, of church membership and attendance in 2010, and of Bruce’s corrected estimates of church membership in 1950, 1967 and 2010.

‘Secularisation, Church and Popular Religion’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, Vol. 62, No. 3, July 2011, pp. 543-61.

http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=8286138&fulltextType=RA&fileId=S0022046909992715

Restudy of Staithes, north Yorkshire by David Clark in Between Pulpit and Pew (1982).

Includes table of Methodist membership at various dates between 1945 and 2005.

‘Methodism and Mining in County Durham, 1881-1991’, Northern History, Vol. 48, No. 2, September 2011, pp. 337-55.

http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/maney/nhi/2011/00000048/00000002/art00010

Partial restudy of the Deerness Valley, County Durham by Robert Moore in Pitmen, Preachers and Politics (1974), with new research by Bruce on Upper Teesdale and the Peterlee area (east coast).

Includes tables of Methodist members and Anglican Easter Day communicants for census years between 1851 and 1991.

Unsurprisingly, Bruce reveals in all seven restudies that there has been a significant decrease in religious belonging over the years, relative to population, which he naturally interprets as further evidence for the secularization thesis, for which he has been for so long a leading proponent. He has recently restated the thesis in his book Secularization: in Defence of an Unfashionable Theory (2011).

However, the articles are not simply a blunt attempt to shoehorn grassroots data to fit the national picture. Although the restudies are inevitably less thorough than the original enquiries, they are based upon some fieldwork by Bruce in each locality, and he has undertaken at least some of the necessary background historical research in libraries and archives. He is also at pains to expose and to explain diversity in each community. 

The Banbury essay contains a useful methodological section exploring the challenges and opportunities of undertaking such restudies. Naturally, additional restudies of religion would potentially be possible in the future, for instance of Rawmarsh and Scunthorpe by Bill Pickering in 1954-56 and of Billingham by Peter Kaim-Caudle in 1957-59 and 1964-66.

Posted in church attendance, Historical studies, Measuring religion, Organisational data, People news | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Restrictions on Religion

Posted on August 12, 2011 by Clive D. Field

The UK’s reputation as a land of religious liberty and toleration seems set to take a bit of a knock following the publication on 9 August 2011 of Rising Restrictions on Religion by the Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion and Public Life. The work was commissioned as part of the Pew-Templeton Global Religious Futures Project, with Brian Grim as the principal researcher.

The report, the second in a series, is the outcome of desk-based research from 18 published primary sources. It seeks to measure, on a points-based system, the incidence of restrictions on religious beliefs and practices in 198 countries between mid-2006 and mid-2009. Data are recorded for a Government Restrictions Index (GRI) and a Social Hostilities Index (SHI). Inevitably, the scoring cannot eliminate a degree of subjectivity.

On the GRI the UK’s overall score rose from 2.2 for the two-year period ending mid-2008 to 2.8 in mid-2009. This was assessed as a moderate score on the fourfold categorization used by Pew (very high embracing the top 5% of country scores, high the next 15%, moderate the next 20%, and low the bottom 60%). Of the specific measures comprising the GRI, 7 had increased in the UK between the two reference dates, 14 were unchanged, and 7 had decreased.

On the SHI the UK’s overall score moved from 2.5 for the period ending mid-2008 to 3.6 in mid-2009. This was assessed as a high score. Seven UK measures rose between the two dates, 11 were unchanged, and 1 had fallen. The UK was one of five European nations (the others being Bulgaria, Denmark, Russia, and Sweden) which experienced a substantial rise in the SHI. In the UK’s case, this is largely attributed by Pew to mounting Islamophobia and anti-Semitism (the latter in response to Israel’s military intervention in Gaza early in 2009).

Overall, combining the GRI and SHI, Pew discovered that restrictions on religion had grown in 23 of the world’s 198 countries (12%), decreased in 12 (6%), and remained essentially unchanged in 163 (82%). Among the 25 most populous nations – which account for three-quarters of the global population – restrictions on religion substantially increased in eight, including the UK. In China, Nigeria, Russia, Thailand, Vietnam and the UK the increases were primarily due to movements in the SHI, whereas in Egypt and France they were the consequence of the GRI.

The main report and the detailed country report on this research are available to download at:

http://pewforum.org/Government/Rising-Restrictions-on-Religion.aspx

Posted in Measuring religion, News from religious organisations, Religion and Politics, Religion in public debate | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Falling Interest in Catholicism Online

Posted on June 17, 2011 by Clive D. Field

Interest in Roman Catholicism appears to be falling worldwide according to a new analysis of Google searches published on 3 June on the Nineteen Sixty-Four research blog of the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA) at Georgetown University in the United States (US). This can be accessed at:

http://nineteensixty-four.blogspot.com/

The post – entitled ‘Is Interest in Catholicism Falling Online?’ – charts weekly Google search volumes for queries including the term Catholic (or the equivalent in other languages) between January 2004 and April 2011 for the United Kingdom (UK), US, France, Germany, Brazil, Australia and a global (five-language) measure.

All the charts, including the UK’s, reveal a marked downward trend in searching for Catholic content over this period, although the UK data display more random weekly volatility than in the US where there is a clear pattern of peaks around Ash Wednesday and Christmas and lows in the summer.

For the UK, as for all the other countries, the high point of Google searches was around the death of Pope John Paul II in April 2005. There was a much less pronounced UK peak for the visit of Pope Benedict XVI to Scotland and England in September 2010.

CARA expresses concern about the trend but offers no explanation for this decline in accessing Catholic-related content on the internet. Indeed, it ‘remains a mystery’. Part of the problem, of course, is that we have no idea from Google whether the decrease affects searches by Catholics, non-Catholics or both.

But it is hard to avoid the suspicion that the scandals surrounding the sexual abuse of children by some Roman Catholic priests must be a factor in lessening people’s desire to learn about Catholicism.

Posted in Measuring religion, Religion Online, visualisation | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Immigrant Religiosity

Posted on June 8, 2011 by Clive D. Field

First-generation immigrants to the UK are three times as likely as natives to claim to attend religious services at least weekly and to pray in private daily. They are also more religious than immigrants to most other European countries on the same two measures.

This is according to a newly-published journal article by two social scientists at Utrecht University: Frank van Tubergen and Jorunn Sindradottir, ‘The Religiosity of Immigrants in Europe: a Cross-National Study’, Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, Vol. 50, No. 2, June 2011, pp. 272-88. See, in particular, the table on page 281.

The data are drawn from European Social Survey, Rounds 1-4 (2002-09), in which representative samples of adults aged 15 and over were interviewed. Tubergen and Sindradottir, however, have focused on a sub-sample of 10,117 first-generation immigrants living in 27 receiving countries, of whom 731 had come to the UK.

33% of immigrants to the UK said they attended religious services at least weekly, compared with 18% of all European immigrants. Indeed, immigrants to the UK came second only to their counterparts in Poland (63%) on this indicator. For UK natives reported weekly attendance was 11% against a continental mean of 17%.

48% of immigrants to the UK prayed daily outside religious services against 30% of immigrants to European countries as a whole. The UK figure was again the highest of all nations except for Poland (62%). 17% of UK natives prayed daily, less than the continental average of 22%.

Self-assessed religiosity was measured on a scale of 0 (not at all religious) to 10 (very religious). Immigrants to the UK scored 5.83 overall, better than the European immigrant mean of 5.44, although on this occasion seven countries recorded a higher figure. UK natives scored 4.04 compared with 4.82 for natives across all Europe.

The UK sub-sample of first-generation immigrants was obviously insufficiently large to permit further disaggregation, particularly by religious affiliation. It is probable that the greater propensity of immigrants to the UK to worship and pray regularly was driven by the high proportion with Roman Catholic and Muslim backgrounds.

The dataset for European Social Survey, Rounds 1-4 is available at the Economic and Social Data Service as SN 4732.

Posted in church attendance, Measuring religion, Survey news | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Trends in Anglican Confirmations, 1872-2009

Posted on April 15, 2011 by Siobhan McAndrew

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.

Confirmations-1872-2009

 

My knowledge of Anglican confirmation is fairly limited. I remember Noel Streatfeild’s autobiographical A Vicarage Family (1963) at school, where the teenage Vicky (Streatfeild’s alter ego) is confirmed shortly before the First World War (she wears a horrific dress and throws an inkwell at the family governess just before the service). From this I gathered that it was the Anglican analogue of Catholic first communion, required to take communion in an Anglican church – although apparently not, as the Church of England website explains here.

I have combined various sources to produce the graph above.

For 1872 to 1970 the source is Currie, Gilbert and Horsley’s data on confirmations from Churches and Churchgoers (1977), originally sourced from The Official Yearbook of the Church of England. The data and source note is also available on BRIN/figures here.

Secondly, there is a set of annual data compiled by the Church Society for 1950-2005 with a description of sources here (although note that the source description encompasses other measures of attendance and rites of passage). These overlap the CGH figures with a very small divergence between 1963 and 1969.

I also have estimates from two editions of P. Brierley (ed.) Religious Trends: Table 8.14.1 in Religious Trends 1 (1998-1999) and Table 8.3.1 in Religious Trends 4 (2003/2004).

These cover different but sometimes overlapping different years and in some cases differ slightly (perhaps because of revision or rounding) although ultimately sourced from Church Statistics, Research & Statistics Department, Archbishops’ Council, Church House.

The final source is the Church of England’s Church Statistics Online, which provides measures for 2000-2009 (2003-2009 data here; 2000-2002 data from the archive section here ). The 2003-2009 data appear to have been rounded.

How can the decline be interpreted? The Church Society refers people to the following article by Brian Green in Crossway (2003). He argues that:

“church attendance and confirmations are firmly linked… if people are not confirmed, why would they attend a form of worship in which they may not participate fully?”

Paul Handley, editor of the Church Times, wrote yesterday in The Guardian that:

“The Church of England has relaxed its regulations, so that anyone who has been baptised can take communion, even in infancy if the priest agrees. Confirmation, then, has become much more of a conscious, opt-in sort of occasion”.

I’m not clear as to when the change in rules was brought into force (perhaps after Green’s commentary in 2003), or why – any clarification from readers would be welcome.

The CGH, Religious Trends and Church Statistics Online data are also given in the table below. For copyright reasons I refer readers again to the Church Society’s 1950-2005 compilation rather than reproducing them below.

Or download the data as a CSV file here.

Posted in Historical studies, Measuring religion, Religion in the Press, Rites of Passage | Tagged , , | 3 Comments

Group-Focused Enmity in Europe

Posted on April 11, 2011 by Clive D. Field

Fresh light on anti-Semitism and Islamophobia in Britain is shed in a report published by the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung in Berlin on 11 March 2011. Entitled Intolerance, Prejudice and Discrimination: A European Report, it is written by Andreas Zick, Beate Kupper and Andreas Hovermann. It is available to download from:

http://library.fes.de/pdf-files/do/07908-20110311.pdf

The publication is based upon the Group-Focused Enmity in Europe project which is located at the Bielefeld Institute for Interdisciplinary Research on Conflict and Violence, and which has been supported by funding from a consortium of six foundations.

Fieldwork for the underlying survey was conducted in eight European countries during autumn 2008: France, Germany, Great Britain, Hungary, Italy, The Netherlands, Poland and Portugal. A sample of 1,000 adults aged 16 and over was interviewed by telephone by TNS in each nation.

Attitudes to various groups were measured, but this particular report concentrates on a sub-set of six types of prejudice: anti-immigrant views, anti-Semitism, homophobia, Islamophobia (or anti-Muslim attitudes, as they are termed here), racism and sexism.

There continues to be evidence of anti-Semitism in Britain, with 14% of adults agreeing that Jews had too much influence, 22% that they tried to take advantage of being victims during the Nazi era, and 23% that they did not care about anything or anybody except their own kind.

However, these figures were actually the lowest for all the eight countries, with the exception of The Netherlands. Britain and The Netherlands came joint first on a fourth measure, agreeing that Jews enriched the national culture (72%). Hungary and Poland were generally most negative about the Jews.

Levels of hostility rose somewhat when the question of Israel-Palestine was put to a half-sample. 36% of Britons said that, given Israeli policy, they could understand why people did not like Jews. Still more, 42%, concurred that Israel was conducting a war of extermination against the Palestinians, which was a bigger proportion than in Hungary, Italy and The Netherlands.

Negativity towards Muslims was greater still. 45% of Britons considered that there were too many Muslims in the country, 50% claimed that they were too demanding, and 47% regarded Islam as a religion of intolerance.

These three items were combined into a scale of anti-Muslim attitudes. While Hungary and Poland were about as Islamophobic as they were anti-Semitic, the mean scores for the remaining nations were much higher than for anti-Semitism, Britain included. Portugal was least Islamophobic.

Other questions did not form part of this scale but, administered to a half-sample, reinforced the evidence of enmity. Only 39% in Britain felt that the Muslim culture fitted well into the country and Europe, and 82% viewed Muslim attitudes towards women as contradicting British values. 38% believed that many Muslims perceived terrorists as heroes, and 26% that the majority of Muslims found terrorism justifiable.

Anti-Muslim sentiments were shown to have an especially strong relationship with anti-immigrant views, and this was particularly true of Britain. The correlation between anti-immigrant and anti-Semitic opinions was less marked but still observable. Anti-Muslim and anti-Semitic attitudes had a relationship of medium strength.

Correlations with self-assessed religiosity were explored in a separate report on the same survey: Beate Kupper and Andreas Zick, Religion and Prejudice in Europe: New Empirical Findings (Alliance Publishing Trust, 2010), which can be found at:

http://www.alliancemagazine.org/books/religionandprejudice.pdf

Whereas, for Europe as a whole, the researchers discovered that ‘the more religious individuals are, the more prejudiced they are’, the pattern in Britain was more complex.

For Britons greater religiosity was most associated with sexism and homophobia, and – to a lesser extent – with racism and anti-immigrant views. In the cases of anti-Semitism and Islamophobia, the very religious were the least prejudiced of the four religiosity groups but the quite religious were the most prejudiced.

Overall, 5% of Britons described themselves as very religious, 29% as quite religious, 27% as not very religious, and 38% as not at all religious. A YouGov poll of 5,000 plus respondents for The Sun last month revealed that 27% saw themselves as religious and 71% not.

Posted in Measuring religion, Religion in public debate, Survey news | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Religious Affiliation and Volunteering

Posted on March 31, 2011 by Siobhan McAndrew

Volunteering by Affiliation

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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.

Religion is captured in the Taking Part surveys by a religious affiliation question along the lines of the recent Census, and a question on whether the respondent currently practises that religion. I posted about the survey here last year: DCMS also provides an online analysis tool, NETQuest, for TP users.

DCMS has compiled a report on the 2010 dataset, as well as some useful crosstabulations and trend data using the complete set of datasets. I have just drawn up the graph above from their uploaded tables on volunteering available here. There are also reports and tables available on digital participation, and cycling and swimming proficiency.

Sadly, the questions on volunteering were not asked in 2009. It’s not clear whether there is any distinct trend over the past five years, but there is a significant difference in the volunteering activity between those reporting that they are Christian and those reporting no religion.

There are many possible reasons for this: older people are also more likely to say that they volunteer, which is also given in thestables, and we know that the older are more likely to report a religious affiliation: this may be the key driver.

Nevertheless, Robert Putnam and David Campbell’s American Grace found that in the US those who were religiously-active were more likely to volunteer in all fields apart from the arts. (See the volunteering category at the American Grace blog; there is also a lot of coverage of American Grace at their Social Capital blog.)

It may be that the situation is similar in the UK. There is a good deal of work to be done in this area, and a lot of data are available. The 2008 British Social Attitudes survey included three items on volunteering:

How many times, if any, did you volunteer in the past 12 months? By volunteering, we mean any unpaid work done to help people besides your family or friends or people you work with.

and

Could you tell me whether you have done any volunteer work for a religious group or place of worship in the past 12 months? any unpaid work done to help people besides your family or friends or people you work with.

Before that, the 1998 and 2008 surveys included questions on charitable, political and religious volunteering, which could be broken down by religious affiliation and frequency of attendance.

Volunteering is also covered extensively in the Citizenship Survey, with a report published here on volunteering and charitable giving using the data. This found that non-practising Christians; practising and non-practising Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs; those of ‘other’ religions who are non-practising, and those with no religion were less likely to volunteer regularly in a formal context compared to practising Christians.

Volunteering is also covered in the European Values Study and European Social Survey.

Substantial research programmes already exist to study volunteering, social capital and philanthropy. The task remains for researchers in the sociology of religion to explain the causal mechanisms through which religiosity affects voluntary effort, and to suggest what the impact of secularisation and growing religious diversity is likely to be.

Posted in Measuring religion, Religion and Social Capital | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment