Category Archives: Measuring religion

Values and Religion

A social psychological view of the connection between religion and values is offered in the recent article by Miriam Pepper, Tim Jackson and David Uzzell, ‘A Study of Multidimensional Religion Constructs and Values in the United Kingdom’, Journal for the … Continue reading

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Pentecost Postponed? Prospects for Churchgoing

A post on the Christian Today website reports on the talk given recently by Dr Peter Brierley of Brierley Research at the third annual Pentecost Festival in London. In it he painted a gloomy picture of the prospects for church … Continue reading

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Janet Eccles on Statistical Approaches to the Study of Religion

How much can statistics tell us about the state of ‘religion’ in Britain today, or in the past? Piety or religiosity may be expressed in many different ways – and outside conventional church traditions altogether. Some forms of religiosity are beyond practical forms of measurement. Continue reading

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Zion’s People: Profile of English Nonconformity

Protestant Nonconformity, formerly known as Religious Dissent and latterly as the Free Churches, has made a major contribution to all walks of British life, not just the religious. The movement had its origins in the puritans and separatists of Elizabethan … Continue reading

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Reflections on Surveying Religion Online: Perils and Promise?

I presented the results of my surveys of religion on the island of Ireland this weekend at the annual conference of the Sociological Association of Ireland (May 7-9, 2010 at Queen’s University in Belfast). All three of the papers presented were about religion, and all three utilized quantitative data of some sort. Continue reading

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Guardian Fact File not so factual

The Guardian is publishing a series of ‘Factfile UK’ supplements this week. The first of them was on Population (Saturday 24 April 2010).

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Religiosity and Party Choice

It’s interesting to read Justin Parkinson, Political Reporter at the BBC, on Christianity and the election.

It’s noteworthy that in the European elections of 2009, the Christian Party – established five years earlier – won 250,000 votes, or 1.6 per cent nationally. While this was not a significant result at the national level, it was nevertheless ahead of Arthur Scargill’s Socialist Labour Party. The party also polled 2.9 per cent in London. Continue reading

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What Easter can tell us about churchgoing

Some of the best statistics we have about churchgoing come from attendance counts. Every year the Church of England, for example, publishes figures on Easter, Christmas and average weekly attendance based on data gathering a year or so earlier. Continue reading

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The Nationality of Numbers

As interesting as studying religion in Britain is, we often want to know to what extent what we find here is similar or different to the results from other countries. However, a problem with cross-national comparative studies of religion (and other social opinions, attitudes and behaviours) is that national context can make a huge difference to the meaning of certain concepts. Continue reading

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Taking Part in England

The Taking Part in England survey is a large survey of cultural and leisure participation in England, sponsored by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. The first was fielded in July 2005 and it has been run annually since then. The current collection agency is BMRB Social Research, which operates the survey via face-to-face interview. Continue reading

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