Christmas Starts with Christ

Posted on September 18, 2011 by Clive D. Field

It is a well-known fact that for retailers and their prospective customers Christmas starts in August, but even the Churches, it seems, have to gear up early for the festive season, with ChurchAds.Net having recently launched its 2011 Christmas advertising campaign.

ChurchAds.Net, previously known as the Churches Advertising Network, was established as an ecumenical body in 1992, following an experimental Christmas advertising campaign in the Church of England Diocese of Oxford in 1991. It has since run many high-profile (and sometimes controversial) campaigns, particularly around Easter and Christmas, employing poster and other print media, radio and – most recently – television advertising.

All this has been made possible by the Broadcasting Act 1990, which permitted broadcast advertising on religious themes; funding from the Jerusalem Trust; the pro bono work of some of the UK’s top award-winning advertising executives and designers; and a dedicated council of reference, trustees and executive team drawn from a range of denominations.

The 2009 Christmas campaign was the first to run under the ‘Christmas starts with Christ’ banner, a theme intended to last for five years. The 2010 campaign introduced alongside this the message of ‘He’s on His way’, accompanied by an image of an ultrasound scan of a haloed foetus Christ in the womb.

The 2010 Christmas campaign report estimates that 30 million people had an opportunity to see or hear the poster and radio advertising, with posters displayed on 1,400 sites and radio commercials on 175 stations. In addition, there were 150,000 page views on the ChurchAds.Net website, 14,000 downloads of the MP3 radio commercials, 10,000 downloads of the A3 poster, and 93,000 items of campaign merchandise sold. The report is available at:

http://churchads.net/2010/pdfs/report_2010.pdf

In the wake of the 2010 campaign, ChurchAds.Net commissioned ComRes to undertake a post-campaign market impact survey, with 2,050 adult Britons aged 18 and over interviewed online between 29 December 2010 and 1 January 2011. ChurchAds.Net has kindly made these data available to BRIN, and selected results appear below.

The survey revealed that 26% of all respondents had seen or heard the strapline ‘Christmas starts with Christ’, with a peak of 35% among the 25-34s. Of the strapline-conscious, 37% had seen or heard it at church (particularly the over-55s), 49% through some form of advertising, with 33% unable to remember where they had seen or heard it (multiple answers were evidently possible).

Although only 9% recalled seeing the 2010 campaign poster, 61% overall liked its message ‘Christmas starts with Christ’ (rising to 70% among the over-65s). This was 14% more than approved of ‘He’s on His way’. Taking the 2010 poster as a whole, 40% considered it original, 39% thought-provoking, 32% clever, 25% effective, 21% controversial, 20% striking, 10% disrespectful, 6% out-of-date, and 5% shocking.

The 2011 Christmas campaign slogan reads ‘However you dress it up … Christmas starts with Christ’. The poster portrays a modern-day nativity crib, surrounded by characters representing contemporary professions and fashions. Thus, the wise men are depicted as successful entrepreneurs whose gifts are iconic treasures from today’s culture. As ChurchAds.Net says, ’It’s the meeting of Christianity and high street consumerism, with Christ in the middle.’ For the first time, ChurchAds.Net plans to place advertisements in regional and national newspapers. See the 2011 campaign page at:

http://churchads.net/2011/index.html

Posted in News from religious organisations, Religion in the Press, Survey news | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

21st Century Evangelicals – The Sequel

Posted on September 18, 2011 by Clive D. Field

The UK’s evangelical Christians are far more likely to be active in their communities than the average person, according to a new report from the Evangelical Alliance – Does Belief Touch Society? – published on 5 September. Hard copies can be purchased at £3 from the Alliance (at 186 Kennington Park Road, London, SE11 4BT) or the report can be downloaded for free from:

http://www.eauk.org/snapshot/upload/Does-Belief-touch-society.pdf

The publication is numbered as Series A, Issue 1 in a collection of reports on 21st Century Evangelicals, following on from the document of the same name released at the start of the year, and based upon 17,300 responses by Christians aged 16 and over in 2010 to a questionnaire devised by Christian Research on behalf of the Alliance. The sample divided between attenders at seven Christian festivals in the UK and congregants at 35 churches randomly selected from the Alliance’s membership. See the BRIN post of 12 January 2011 for further details:

http://www.brin.ac.uk/news/?p=826

Does Belief Touch Society? derives from a panel of 3,300 of the original 17,300 evangelicals who signed up to take part in further enquiries, of whom 1,151 participated in this first survey, which was conducted online around Easter 2011. Given the self-selecting nature of the micro-sample, and the methodology deployed for the 2010 study, there is a risk that the respondents to Does Belief Touch Society? may not be fully representative of the approximately two million evangelical Christians in the UK estimated by Tearfund in 2007. The Alliance concedes in the report (p. 3) that it has been unable to weight its findings and that younger people and ethnic minorities may be under-represented in the panel.

On the doctrine of the cross, 99% of evangelicals agreed or strongly agreed that the message of the cross had made a huge difference in their lives, 91% strongly agreed that Christ’s blood is the final and only effective sacrifice for human sin, 89% strongly agreed that Jesus Christ defeated the powers of evil through His death, and 84% strongly agreed that God Himself was suffering in Christ for humankind in the crucifixion. However, only 51% agreed that at the cross God poured out His holy anger upon His son, with 27% dissenting and 22% unsure.

On the Resurrection, 91% agreed or strongly agreed that Jesus rose from the tomb with a physical body, 91% agreed or strongly agreed that at the end all who have died will be raised to face judgment, 85% strongly agreed that after death Christian believers will enjoy everlasting life, 82% strongly agreed that belief in the Resurrection shaped the way they lived now, and 78% were very confident that they would enjoy everlasting life on their own death.

On Easter observance, 95% had worshipped on Easter Sunday but far fewer (65% overall and just 52% of under-35s) on Good Friday. 45% had attended a special church event in the week before Easter, and 41% took part in a public act of witness or evangelistic outreach over Easter. Under one-third had given up or taken up something during Lent, with women and younger people significantly more likely to do so.

In terms of civic participation, evangelicals were far more likely than the average citizen to be trustees of a charity, school governors, members of a political party, local councillors, and magistrates, but trade union membership was about the national norm.

On politics, 91% intended to or had voted in the 5 May 2011 elections and referendum (compared with a UK-wide turnout of 42%), with 38% in favour of and 39% opposed to the Alternative Vote. Evangelicals were equally divided about the military interventions in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya, but 80% were emphatic in opposing the legal status of marriage being extended to same-sex partnerships.

Posted in Attitudes towards Religion, church attendance, News from religious organisations, Religion and Politics, Religion and Social Capital, Survey news | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

YouGov@Cambridge on Religion

Posted on September 17, 2011 by Clive D. Field

On 30 April last, we reported on the virtual launch of YouGov@Cambridge (a collaboration between pollsters YouGov and the University of Cambridge’s Department of Politics and International Studies) and on the interim results from the first annual YouGov@Cambridge census of British life and attitudes. See:

http://www.brin.ac.uk/news/?p=1223

Between 4 and 7 September, in advance of a two-day physical launch in Cambridge on 8-9 September, YouGov@Cambridge released final tables on the 2011 census, the fieldwork for which extended from 13 April to 20 May 2011 and involved online interviews with a representative sample of 64,303 adult Britons aged 18 and over (although most questions were put to sub-samples).

The new tables included the results for a module on religion, which had not featured in the interim release, and this post summarizes some of the main findings. For the full data, go to:

http://www.yougov.polis.cam.ac.uk/sites/yougov.polis.cam.ac.uk/files/Religion.pdf

  • 40% of adults professed no religion, 55% were Christian and 5% of other faiths – age made a major difference, with only 38% of the 18-34s being Christian and 53% having no religion, whereas for the over-55s the figures were 70% and 26% respectively 
  • 74% of respondents had been brought up in some religion (including 70% as Christians, implying a net 15% leakage from Christianity over time) and 25% not, the latter figure rising to 39% among the 18-34s 
  • 35% described themselves as very or fairly religious and 63% as not very or not at all religious – there were no big variations by demographics (even by age), but Londoners (41%) did stand out as being disproportionately religious, doubtless reflecting the concentration of ethnic minorities in the capital 
  • 34% believed in a personal God or gods (ranging from 28% among the 18-34s to 42% of over-55s), 10% in some higher spiritual power, 19% in neither, with 29% unsure or agnostic 
  • 11% of respondents claimed to attend a religious service once a month or more, 27% less often, and 59% never – non-attendance was higher among the young (62% for the 18-34s) than the old (54% for the over-55s) and among manual workers (62%) than non-manuals (56%), while London had the best figure for monthly or more attendance (16%) 
  • 16% claimed to pray daily, 12% several times a week, 4% once a week, 7% several times a month, 4% once a month, 24% less often, and 29% never – men (34%) were more likely not to pray at all than women (24%) 
  • 79% agreed and 11% disagreed that religion is a cause of much misery and conflict in the world today 
  • 72% agreed and 15% disagreed that religion is used as an excuse for bigotry and intolerance, with a high of 81% in Scotland where sectarianism has often been rife 
  • 35% agreed and 45% disagreed that religion is a force for good in the world, dissentients being more numerous among men (50%) than women (41%) 
  • 78% (82% of the over-55s) agreed and 12% disagreed that religion should be a private matter and had no place in politics 
  • 16% agreed and 70% disagreed that Christians and the Church should have more influence over politics in the country – only among the over-55s did the proportion in favour of the proposition scrape above one-fifth 
  • 61% agreed and 18% disagreed that organized religion is in terminal decline in the UK – the over-55s (67%) were most prone to agree and Londoners (21%) to disagree 
  • 40% agreed and 40% disagreed that the decline of organized religion had made Britain a worse place – the over-55s (54%) were twice as likely to agree as the 18-34s (27%) 
  • 51% (57% in Scotland) agreed and 32% (37% among men) disagreed that all religions are equally valid 
  • 34% agreed and 49% disagreed that some religions are better than others, men (39%), the over-55s (38%), and Londoners (38%) being disproportionately likely to agree 
  • 49% agreed and 29% disagreed that it is good for children to be brought up within a religion – among the 18-34s opinion divided at 36% each (whereas for the over-55s 64% agreed and 22% disagreed) 
  • 40% agreed (rising to 46% of men and 44% of 18-34s) and 39% disagreed that religion is incompatible with modern scientific knowledge 
  • 29% agreed and 54% disagreed that there are some things in life which only religion can explain, the over-55s (35%) placing more trust in religion than the 18-34s (24%)

All in all, these data point to a society in which religion is increasingly in retreat and nominal. With the principal exception of the older age groups, many of those who claim some religious allegiance fail to underpin it by a belief in God or to translate it into regular prayer or attendance at a place of worship. People in general are more inclined to see the negative than the positive aspects of religion, and they certainly want to keep it well out of the political arena.

Posted in Attitudes towards Religion, church attendance, Religion and Politics, Survey news | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 8 Comments

Scottish Social Attitudes Discrimination Module

Posted on September 12, 2011 by Clive D. Field

The level of religious prejudice in Scotland in 2010 was much the same as in 2006, notwithstanding significant legislative and other activities to counter it by both the UK and Scottish Governments during the intervening years.

Moreover, Scottish attitudes to Muslims continued to be more negative than to other religious groups, despite a 7% rise in those having Muslim acquaintances over the four-year period.

These are among the headline findings from the report on the discrimination module in the Scottish Social Attitudes Survey, which was published by Scottish Government Social Research on 11 August 2011.

Written by Rachel Ormston, John Curtice, Susan McConville and Susan Reid of the Scottish Centre for Social Research (ScotCen), Scottish Social Attitudes Survey, 2010: Attitudes to Discrimination and Positive Action can be downloaded from:

http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Resource/Doc/355716/0120166.pdf

The module was funded by the Scottish Government and the Equality and Human Rights Commission (Scotland). Fieldwork was undertaken by ScotCen by means of face-to-face interview and self-completion questionnaire between June and October 2010. Interviews were achieved with a representative sample of 1,495 Scottish adults aged 18 and over, a response rate of 54%.

Answers to questions of particular interest to BRIN (mainly affecting Muslims, since Protestant/Catholic sectarianism was not covered in the module) appear below, but readers should note that no attempt has been made to summarize the important multivariate regression analyses which appear in Annex B of the report.

49% of Scots agreed that Scotland would begin to lose its identity if more Muslims came to settle there (compared with 46% who said the same about Eastern Europeans and 45% about blacks and Asians). The proportion was similar to the 50% recorded in 2006 but well up on 38% in 2003. It was highest among the over-65s (67%), those with no educational qualifications (62%), and residents of the most deprived areas (62%).

46% of Scots did not know anybody who was a Muslim (slightly reduced from 52% in 2006), with 9% unsure and 45% reporting some acquaintance, overwhelmingly in a non-familial context. Those acquainted with a Muslim were less likely to say there is sometimes good reason to be prejudiced than those with no Muslim contacts (23% versus 35%).

23% of respondents indicated that they would be unhappy about a family member marrying or forming a long-term relationship with a Muslim (rising to 45% among the over-65s and 39% with no educational qualifications), compared with 18% for a Hindu, 9% for a Jew, and just 2% (of non-Christians) for a Christian. The equivalent figures for a Muslim in 2003 and 2006 were 20% and 24% respectively. The extent of unhappiness varied inversely with income, falling from 31% for those who brought in less than £14,300 per annum to 14% for those earning over £44,200. Religion also made a difference, the proportion being 28% for those with a religious affiliation and 17% for those without.

15% of Scots claimed that a Muslim would make an unsuitable primary school teacher, the same figure as in 2006. The proportion climbed with age, from 6% among the 18-24s to 28% with the over-65s. It stood at 27% among Scots with no educational qualifications but at only 8% for the most highly qualified; at 23% for those on the lowest incomes and 9% on the highest; and at 23% for those who did not know any Muslims and 8% for those with Muslim acquaintances. 55% said a Muslim would be suitable, with 24% neutral.

69% of all respondents (and 83% of over-55s) felt that a bank should be able to insist that a female Muslim employee remove a veil, but only 23% said the same about a female Muslim employee wearing a headscarf. 24% considered a bank should be able to require a Sikh male employee to remove his turban and 15% a Christian woman employee to remove a crucifix.

32% of Scots felt that it would be a bad or very bad use of Government money for funds to be channeled to organizations which helped Muslims find work, increasing to 43% of over-65s, 45% of those with no formal educational qualifications, and 48% of those thinking that there is sometimes good reason to be prejudiced.

Muslims apart, there were some correlations between religiosity and discriminatory attitudes as a whole. For example, those considering themselves belonging to any religion were more likely to say that there is sometimes good reason to be prejudiced than the non-religious (31% and 25% respectively). Similarly, those who attended religious services at least once a week were twice as likely as Scots in general to believe that same-sex relationships were always or mostly wrong (57% versus 27%).

Scottish attitudes to Muslims and Islam were also explored in last year’s Ipsos MORI Scotland and British Council Scotland research on Muslim Integration in Scotland, which we have covered at:

http://www.brin.ac.uk/news/?p=515

Posted in Attitudes towards Religion, Official data, Survey news | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Collective Worship in Schools

Posted on September 12, 2011 by Clive D. Field

New research for the BBC indicates that the law requiring a daily act of collective worship in state-maintained schools in England appears to be widely ignored and to command relatively limited public support. The obligation was originally laid down by the Education Act 1944 and has been carried forward, with some amendment, into subsequent legislation.

The survey, published on 6 September, was conducted by ComRes by telephone among a sample of 1,743 adults aged 18 and over in England between 15 and 24 July 2011. They included 500 parents of children of school age living in the household. The study was commissioned to coincide with a series of faith-based programmes on BBC local radio. Full results can be found at:

http://www.comres.co.uk/polls/BBC_Religion_Worship_in_schools_results_(plus_regions)_July11.pdf

Parents with school-age children were asked whether, to the best of their knowledge, their children attended a daily act of collective worship at school. Only 28% said that they did, with 64% replying in the negative, and 1% reporting that they had withdrawn their children from such worship (as they are legally entitled to do). 8% were unsure of the situation. There was some variation in the replies by demographic groups, although small cell sizes necessitate that the disaggregated data should be treated with caution.

The mean was somewhat brought down by the inclusion of parents with children aged under 5. 37% of parents of children aged 5-10 reported that their children attended a daily act of collective worship at school, compared with 33% of those aged 11-15 and 30% of those aged 16-18. It has long been known that secondary schools have struggled to comply with the law, but these statistics imply that primary schools are also failing, at least in the understanding of parents.

The full sample, comprising parents and non-parents, was asked whether the requirement for a daily collective act of worship in state schools should be enforced. Three-fifths said that it should not be, rising to two-thirds among parents of school-age children. Proponents of enforcement numbered 36% overall, being greatest among the over-55s and the bottom (DE) social group. 4% expressed no views.     

These findings are likely to fuel the growing campaign among secularists, teachers and even some faith leaders to persuade the Government to repeal the legislation. The National Secular Society has been especially strident, condemning compulsory collective worship as a breach of human rights.

Posted in Religion and Politics, Religion in public debate, Survey news | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

9/11 – Ten Years On

Posted on September 11, 2011 by Clive D. Field

Today is the tenth anniversary of 9/11, the terror attacks on the United States, usually credited to al-Qaeda, in which almost 3,000 people perished. The legacy of that day continues to be felt in numerous ways, including – in Britain – in persisting negative attitudes to Islam and Muslims.

This is borne out in a special ‘9/11 – ten years on’ survey undertaken by YouGov on 6 and 7 September 2011 among an online sample of 1,947 adult Britons aged 18 and over. The full data tabulations are available at:

http://today.yougov.co.uk/sites/today.yougov.co.uk/files/yg-archives-yougov-911tenyearson-090911.pdf

Asked about their perceptions of the relationship of British Muslims with terrorism, 15% of respondents claimed that a large proportion of British Muslims felt no sense of loyalty to this country and were prepared to condone or even carry out terrorist acts. This was only three points down on the figure for 22-24 August 2006, one year after 7/7, the terrorist attacks on London’s transport network.

The number was higher among Conservative voters (18%) than Liberal Democrats (7%), men (16%) than women (13%), the over-40s (16%) than the under-25s (11%), manual workers (18%) than non-manuals (12%), with a regional peak of 18% in the Midlands and Wales.

A further 63% acknowledged that, while the great majority of British Muslims were peaceful and law-abiding, there was a dangerous minority who exhibited disloyalty and sympathy for terrorism. Just 17% stated that practically all British Muslims were peaceful and law-abiding who deplored acts of terrorism. 5% expressed no opinion.

Given these perceptions, it is unsurprising that 63% of adults (a mere 2% less than in 2006) wished to see Britain’s security services focus their intelligence-gathering and terrorism-prevention efforts on Muslims living in or seeking to enter this country, on the grounds that, although most Muslims were not terrorists most terrorists threatening Britain were Muslim. This view was held by three-quarters of the over-60s and Conservative voters.

Moreover, a slight majority (51%, compared with 53% in 2006) considered that Islam itself – as distinct from Islamic fundamentalist groups – posed a major or some threat to Western liberal democracy, rising to 65% of Conservatives and 60% of the over-60s. Only 13% thought that Islam posed no threat at all.

It is a measure of Britons’ continuing fears of ‘Islamic terrorism’ that, despite the current Coalition Government’s military assistance to the Libyan rebels who have all but toppled the oppressive regime of Colonel Gadaffi, 49% still justify the policy of the previous Labour administration of exchanging security information on Islamic extremism and al-Qaeda with Gadaffi. Fewer than one-quarter are critical of the policy.

This last finding emerges from a separate YouGov survey for today’s Sunday Times, in which 2,724 British adults were interviewed online on 8 and 9 September 2011. Detailed results have been posted at:   

http://today.yougov.co.uk/sites/today.yougov.co.uk/files/yg-archives-pol-st-results-09-110911.pdf

Posted in Religion and Politics, Religion in public debate, Survey news | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

English Baccalaureate and Faith Schools

Posted on September 1, 2011 by Clive D. Field

A Government press release on 31 August trumpeted that its controversial introduction of the English Baccalaureate (or eBacc) has had an immediate impact on reversing the historic decline in pupils taking ‘traditional’ or more ‘academic’ GCSE subjects. And nowhere does this appear more so than in faith schools.

The eBacc was introduced as a performance measure in the 2010 school league tables. It measures where pupils have secured a C grade or better in GCSEs or accredited international GCSEs across a core of subjects: English, mathematics, two sciences, history or geography, and a language.

To check on the eBacc’s effect, the Department for Education commissioned the National Centre for Social Research (NatCen) to undertake a survey of English maintained secondary schools between 23 June and 21 July 2011. A representative sample of 1,500 schools was approached to take part, of which 692 did so (578 by telephone and 114 online), a response rate of 46%.

Overall, the study found that a greater proportion of Year 9 pupils, who in most cases would have very recently made their GCSE selection, were taking GCSE subjects that could lead them to achieving the eBacc than was the case with Year 10 pupils – 47% and 33% respectively.

However, for pupils attending faith schools the figure was 55% for year 9 pupils, 8% above the mean and 10% more than in non-religious schools. At year 10 41% of pupils in faith schools were taking eBacc subjects compared with 31% in schools that did not have a religious character. This appears to confirm the relatively more ‘traditional’ approach to the curriculum of the faith-based school sector.

Just under half of schools (45%) indicated that subjects and courses had been withdrawn from the curriculum or failed to recruit enough students for the 2011/12 academic year. Most of the courses withdrawn were BTEC (Business and Technology Education Council) courses, many of which are regarded as ‘soft’ subjects by some politicians and educationalists.

No mention is made of religious studies (RS) as a withdrawn subject in the short report on the results of the survey, prepared by Sam Clemens of NatCen, but many faith leaders fear that the eBacc will fairly quickly curtail the growing popularity of RS as a GCSE, since RS has not been designated by Government as part of the eBacc core.

The report is available to download at:

https://www.education.gov.uk/publications/eOrderingDownload/DFE-RB150.pdf

Posted in Official data, Religion in public debate, Survey news | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Taking Part, 2010-11

Posted on August 27, 2011 by Clive D. Field

My colleague Siobhan McAndrew introduced BRIN users to the Taking Part surveys in her post on 12 April 2010. See:

http://www.brin.ac.uk/news/?p=172

These studies have been running continuously in England since 2005, with fieldwork by TNS-BMRB on behalf of the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) and four of its Arms Length Bodies.

The surveys cover many aspects of leisure, culture and sport (although it should be noted that they have no value as a guide to regular attendance at places of worship).

During the course of this summer the data for year 6 (mid-April 2010 to mid-April 2011) of Taking Part have progressively become available, culminating in the annual Taking Part User Event on 18 August and the release of the year 6 dataset by the Economic and Social Data Service (ESDS) on 25 August.

Face-to-face interviews were conducted with a cross-section of 14,002 adults aged 16 and over and 1,116 children aged 11-15 resident in private households in England, with information also collected from parents or guardians about 1,590 children aged 5-10.

As has been the custom, a couple of questions on religion were included, primarily for use as background demographic variables in analysing responses to other questions. However, given the large size of the sample, they also have independent value in their own right.

Asked ‘What is your religion?’ – which many would regard as a somewhat leading question – 62% of adults replied Christian, 4% Muslim, 3% other world faiths, 28% none, and 2% (spontaneously) atheist or agnostic.

The no religion category varied considerably by age, ranging from 46% among young persons aged 16-24 to 9% for the over-75s.

Muslim numbers naturally peaked among non-whites, but they also grew in direct relation with the number of children, from 2% in households with no children to 46% in those with five or more children.

Of those professing a religion, 41% said that they were currently practising it (practice was not defined). The proportion was highest among Muslims (88%), followed by Hindus (83%), Sikhs (78%), Buddhists (66%), Jews (61%), and Christians (36%).

Regionally, the range of practice was from 25% in the North-East to 58% in London (where non-Christians and Afro-Caribbean Christians are disproportionately to be found).

The practice figure was 36% for those whose first language was English and 78% among those for whom it was a second language, suggesting a strong linkage between ‘religiosity’ and ‘immigration’.

Taking Part is a rich source of data which can be explored further in one of three ways:

a) printed reports and spreadsheets can be found on the DCMS website, the individual Excel files containing results for questions on the arts, cycling and swimming, digital participation, heritage, libraries, museums and galleries, sport, and volunteering, all with disaggregation by religious affiliation (no religion, Christian, other religion) for the six years of data; these are available at:

http://www.culture.gov.uk/publications/8253.aspx

b) users can register (for free) to access the Taking Part NETQuest service and run their own analyses online in real time (it actually is a very simple process), exporting the results as PDF documents, Excel files or text files; go to:

http://www.culture.gov.uk/what_we_do/research_and_statistics/6762.aspx

c) finally, the full dataset can be obtained from ESDS as SN 6855; see:

http://www.esds.ac.uk/findingData/snDescription.asp?sn=6855&key=6855

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

Consumerist Christians

Posted on August 25, 2011 by Clive D. Field

Many professing Christians seem unconsciously torn between the consumer-driven world that encourages material wealth and their religious beliefs, according to research publicized by the University of Bath on 22 August 2011 in a press release available at:

http://www.bath.ac.uk/research/news/2011/08/22/christianity-consumerism

The study was conducted by Avi Shankar, of Bath’s Centre for Research in Advertising and Consumption, and Ekant Veer of the University of Canterbury, New Zealand.

More than 400 people living in the UK were shown an advert for the same watch that was either depicted as being an item of desire and public recognition, or as an item of functional value. 

Half of the sample identified themselves as Christians believing that materialism was wrong. Although non-religious consumers did not prefer one advert over the other, religious consumers were 25% more likely to purchase the watch if they saw the advert that did not portray it as a materialistic item. 

‘We found that expensive luxury watches that were advertised as being showy or an item of envy were frowned upon by religious consumers. However, when the same item was advertised as being high quality and enduring, rather than having materialistic value, the religious consumers were significantly more willing to purchase the product.’

The authors claim that the results of the study ‘help to explain how many Christians acquire and store materialistic items for themselves and their family, despite many Biblical teachings that discourage hoarding wealth.’ They suggest the findings could be used by marketers, advertisers and sales forces to drive sales up.

‘It’s important to know what type of person you’re dealing with,’ said Dr Shankar. ‘If you are talking to someone who is clearly not averse to being materialistic, then it doesn’t really matter what you say. But, if you’re targeting a high-end, expensive, flashy product to people who are put off by materialism, then you need to change your approach.’

More generally, there is a dearth of survey information about religion and consumerism readily available in the public domain. This is true, for instance, of a major but largely inaccessible report on marketing to Muslims from JWT Worldwide in 2007, in which 350 British Muslim adults aged 18 and over were interviewed.

Posted in Survey news | Tagged , , , , , | 1 Comment

Faiths in Action

Posted on August 22, 2011 by Clive D. Field

Faiths in Action was a Department for Communities and Local Government-backed £4.4 million grant programme for faith, inter-faith, voluntary and community sector groups and organizations in England, which ran from 1 April 2009 to 31 March 2011.

In all, the programme funded 575 small-scale projects within local communities to enable people of different faiths and wider civil society to develop strong and positive relationships.

The Community Development Foundation has recently published an assessment of the programme: Daniel Pearmain, Faiths in Action: Final Evaluation Report.

In particular, this explores the experiences of 297 projects which received funding during Year 2 of the programme (1 April 2010 to 31 March 2011) and which replied to the survey (non-response was about 40%). The report is available at:

http://www.cdf.org.uk/c/document_library/get_file?uuid=31a7bf5e-0490-421d-b532-0ce610153b20&groupId=10128

Key statistics from the evaluation include the following:

  • 78% of projects were carried out by voluntary and community sector groups, registered charities or similar agencies, with a further 17% led by faith-based groups 
  • 21% of projects operated exclusively within the local area (defined as within 20 minutes’ walking distance), 49% within the local authority, 21% regionally, 7% nationally, and 2% internationally 
  • On average, 338 individuals benefited from each project, and nearly 200,000 from the programme; the median was lower (110), since the mean was distorted by groups working with large numbers of school students 
  • Beneficiary groups were diverse: women (89%), men (76%), youth (73%), people on low incomes (64%), urban dwellers (62%), people of a particular religion or belief (60%), unemployed (57%), single (57%), families (54%), people of a particular ethnicity (52%), elderly (47%), children (45%), disabled (36%), and refugees (34%) 
  • Faith communities benefiting from projects included: Christians (89%), Muslims (86%), Hindus (51%), Sikhs (38%), those of no religion (35%), Jews (32%), Buddhists (27%), and Baha’is (16%) 
  • 71% of projects stimulated engagement with specific groups not previously worked with in the community, and this was especially the case with people of a particular religion/belief or ethnicity 
  • 57% of projects reported that the Faiths in Action funding had contributed a great deal to their awareness of inter-faith activity in the local area and 32% a little, and 84% had participated rather more in local inter-faith networks as a result 
  • 60% claimed that their projects had contributed a great deal to integration between faith groups in their local area and 31% a little 
  • 25% of projects felt that the funding had considerably increased their group’s influence on local decision-making affecting community cohesion and faith, and 46% that it had modestly increased their influence 
  • Each project boosted volunteering by an average of seven persons, or 4,000 across the programme
  • 44% of projects said that support from the programme had helped them develop capacity to access other sources of funding through enhanced kudos, learning opportunities, and improved practical skills 
  • 81% of projects said that their organization would continue the same or similar work following cessation of Faiths in Action funding

The report also includes a more qualitative evaluation of the three-year (2008-11) £1.9 million Government programme to capacity-build a network of nine Regional Faith Forums in England. The first Forum was set up in 1997, the most recent in 2010.

Posted in Religion and Social Capital, Survey news | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment