Future of the Citizenship Survey

Posted on November 8, 2010 by Clive D. Field

There have been several posts on the BRIN website this year highlighting key religion-related findings from various reports on the Department for Communities and Local Government’s Citizenship Survey of England and Wales. The Survey commenced in 2001 and currently runs on an annual (and continuous) basis.

Inter alia, the Citizenship Survey covers the incidence of religious prejudice and discrimination, and the role of religion in community cohesion. The Survey employs a large core sample of 10,000 adults each year, with ethnic minority and Muslim boosts of 5,000 and 1,200 respectively.

Now the Department has issued a 13-page consultation paper stating that ‘unless there is feedback from users indicating an overriding need to continue with the Citizenship Survey’, the Department proposes to discontinue it after 2010-11. The decision has been driven by the need ‘to find savings as a result of the fiscal deficit’.

The aims of the consultation are threefold:

  • To identify how Citizenship Survey data are currently used
  • To understand the implications of cancelling the Citizenship Survey
  • To identify options for alternative information sources, in the event of the Department proceeding with the cancellation of the Citizenship Survey, including the collection of data of less stringent quality

The consultation document can be found at:

http://www.communities.gov.uk/publications/communities/futurecitizenshipsurvey  

Any comments should be sent, preferably by email, and to arrive no later than 5 pm on Tuesday 30 November, to:

Citizenship.Survey@communities.gsi.gov.uk

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Religion of Prisoners

Posted on November 3, 2010 by Clive D. Field

Government has regularly reported on the religious affiliation of prisoners in England and Wales, and time series for recent decades, until 2008, are already available on the BRIN website at:

http://www.brin.ac.uk/figures/#Prisoners

Data for 2009 were released during the summer in tables 7.25-7.30 of the Ministry of Justice’s Offender Management Caseload Statistics, 2009. This document can be viewed at:

http://www.justice.gov.uk/publications/prisonandprobation.htm

According to table 7.25 (a high-level summary for each year from 1999 to 2009), the proportion of prisoners professing no religion in 2009 was 34.6%, up from 30.2% ten years previously. During this decade the overall prison population grew by 30%.

Christians accounted for 48.7% of prisoners, a big reduction from 60.9% in 1999. Unlike other Government sources, Christians were sub-divided here, with most being either Anglicans (25.9%) or Roman Catholics (17.1%). The over-representation of Catholics among prisoners has long been a source of angst to the Roman Catholic Church.

Non-Christian prisoners have almost doubled since 1999, from 8.9% to 16.6%. By far the biggest group in 2009 comprised Muslims (11.9%), about two and a half times more than their presence in society as a whole, as recorded in the Integrated Household Survey. See also our post on Muslims in prison at: http://www.brin.ac.uk/news/?p=336

Many of the differences between the religious profile of the general and prison populations are explicable by demographics. These can be explored further in some of the other tables. There are disaggregations of religion in 2009 by gender and ethnicity in table 7.26; gender and age in 7.27; gender and custody type in 7.28; and gender and length of custodial sentence in 7.29. Social class background is not analysed.

Table 7.30 sub-divides the broad religious groupings used in table 7.25, for each year between 2002 and 2009. So, if you are interested in calculating law-breaking rates among Quakers, Mormons, Pagans, Rastafarians or whoever, here is your statistical goldmine.

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Violent Extremism

Posted on November 3, 2010 by Clive D. Field

One of the four strands in the previous Labour government’s CONTEST counter-terrorism strategy was focused on preventing extremism. It was especially concerned to stop the radicalization of young Muslims, following the London bombings in 2005.

In an effort to improve the evidence base, the Department for Communities and Local Government decided to include an experimental module on attitudes to violent extremism in the first three quarters (April-December 2009) of the 2009-10 Citizenship Survey of England and Wales.

Fieldwork was undertaken by Ipsos MORI and TNS-BMRB among a representative sample of adults aged 16 and over, including booster samples of ethnic minorities and Muslims. 12,089 people were interviewed in all, among them a core sample of 6,963 and 2,708 Muslims.

The headline results from the module have been published recently in a statistical release from the Department (ISBN 978-1-4098-2529-6), which can be read online at:

http://www.communities.gov.uk/documents/statistics/pdf/1702054.pdf

Professing Christians (87%) were more likely than Sikhs (82%), Muslims (80%), people with no religion (79%) and Hindus (76%) to say that it was always wrong to use violent extremism in Britain to protest against things deemed to be very unfair or unjust.

The proportion thinking it was sometimes, often or always right to deploy violence stood at 8% overall, peaking at 15% for Hindus, 12% for Muslims and 10% for the irreligious. Jewish and Buddhist sub-samples were too small to report.

However, in a multivariate analysis, taking account of age, income, social class and other circumstances, only people with no religion were found to be significantly different from Christians.

So, while Muslims and Hindus (as a group) were less likely than Christians to reject violent extremism, the differences are largely explicable in terms of their younger age and/or divergent socio-economic profiles. Age is particularly relevant.

This explanation does not hold good for the no religion group. Even controlling for age and socio-economic factors, its members remained less likely than Christians to reject violent extremism.

The report is at pains to point out that ‘this does not mean that the absence of religious beliefs contributes to greater support for violent extremism. There may be other factors, which were not included in the multivariate analysis, which explain the difference …’

In addition to this general question, respondents were asked about the use of violent extremism, in the name of religion, to protest or achieve a goal. In the core sample (excluding 2% who failed to answer), 95% said that this was always wrong, 4% often wrong, 1% sometimes right and sometimes wrong, with very small numbers indeed opting for often or always right. These results are not broken down by religious affiliation.

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More Church of England Statistics

Posted on November 1, 2010 by Clive D. Field

The Church of England issued two statistics-related press releases on 28 October.

The first concerned parochial finance for 2008 and licensed ministers for 2009, complementing the parochial affiliation and attendance data which were made available in February. 

The financial statistics contained some good news. Despite the recession, which has hit the wider charity sector hard, both tax-efficient planned giving and legacy giving in the Church of England continued to increase, reaching record levels. Overall parochial income was £925 million and expenditure £874 million.

As for ministry, 491 candidates were accepted to train in 2009, making a total of 1,338 in training (five-sixths over 30 years of age). 564 new clergy were ordained, 309 entering full-time paid ministry. Taking retirements and other losses into account, there was a net decrease of 128 full-time paid clergy. At the end of 2009, there were some 28,000 licensed and authorized ministers, ordained and lay, active in the Church of England.

The press release can be read at:

http://www.cofe.anglican.org/news/pr9710.html

The data appear as part of the online edition of Church Statistics, 2008/9 (with previous years back to 2001) at:

http://www.cofe.anglican.org/info/statistics/churchstats2008/statisticsfront2008.html

The second press release reported the office and working costs of the Church’s 113 bishops (44 diocesan and 69 suffragan and full-time assistant bishops) for the year-ending 31 December 2009. The total bill came to £14,952,000.

The release is at:

http://www.cofe.anglican.org/news/pr9510.html

The data, with those for each year since 2000 (when the costs of individual bishops were published for the first time), will be found at:

http://www.cofe.anglican.org/info/bishopsofficeandworkingcosts.html

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Halloween, Take 2

Posted on October 31, 2010 by Clive D. Field

Today is Halloween (All Hallows’ Eve). We reported on 1 October (http://www.brin.ac.uk/news/?p=629) about the rapidly growing financial value of the market in Halloween-related products and also noted last year’s Angus Reid Public Opinion (ARPO) survey on the observance of Halloween in Britain.

Fresh data are now available from a YouGov poll commissioned by The Sun newspaper and conducted online on 27-28 October among a representative sample of 1,571 Britons aged 18 and over. Full results have been published at:

http://today.yougov.co.uk/sites/today.yougov.co.uk/files/YG-Archives-Life-Sun-Halloween-291010.pdf

18% of the whole sample said that they were planning to celebrate Halloween this weekend. This was 4% more than told ARPO in 2009 that they always celebrated Halloween, although an additional 45% then said that they sometimes did.

YouGov recorded no real difference in the celebration of Halloween by gender and social class. However, age was significant: 33% of the 18-24s and 28% of the 25-39s planned to mark the festival but only 15% of the 40-59s and 5% of the over-60s.

Regionally, Scots intend to celebrate Halloween most (28%), followed by Londoners (20%). Party political preference is also a factor: 25% of Liberal Democrats will be Halloweeners but 15% of Conservatives.

Even those who will not be Halloweening themselves are likely to get the ‘trick or treat’ knock on the door tonight. While 38% of all adults regard this as a harmless tradition, 44% (including 54% of the over-60s) consider it an unacceptable annoyance.

Of the 24% with children of the appropriate age, 38% think they will go trick or treating tonight and 56% not. The highest incidence is anticipated by Labour voters (45%), the 18-24s (47%), and residents of Northern England (44%) and Scotland (45%).

If you are planning to answer the door tonight, YouGov has some advice about what to hand out to the trick or treaters, based on its SixthSense children’s confectionery study. You can certainly forget about trying to palm them off with anything nutritious or non-sugary, and dark chocolate is not well-received either. See:

http://today.yougov.co.uk/consumer/trick-or-treat

POSTSCRIPT [21 November]

A further Halloween poll was conducted in October by TNS Omnibus, among an online sample of 1,046 adult Britons aged 16-64. 25% said they would be personally celebrating Halloween and spending on average over £30 to do so. For the TNS press release, see:

http://www.tns-ri.co.uk/what-we-do/6863.aspx

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Religion and Belief in Higher Education Project

Posted on October 29, 2010 by Clive D. Field

The Religion and Belief in Higher Education project, based at the Faculty of Education, Health and Sciences, University of Derby, has just entered its primary data-gathering phase, with separate online surveys launched for higher education staff and students.

Commissioned by the Equality Challenge Unit, and led by Professor Paul Weller, the project aims to develop an evidence base for understanding the experience of staff and students in higher education with a religion or belief.

The intention is that this evidence base will then ‘support the further development of more inclusive policy and practice within the higher education sector that meets legal requirements while also extending good practice’.

Full information about the project, which runs until March 2011 and covers England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, will be found at:

http://www.derby.ac.uk/ehs/research/religion-and-belief-in-HE

If eligible, to participate in the surveys, reckoned to take about 15 minutes to complete, go to:

http://www.derby.ac.uk/ehs/research/religion-and-belief-in-HE/project-online-surveys

Obviously, respondents will constitute a self-selecting sample, and it will be interesting to see how the data are eventually weighted and analysed to ensure they are as representative of the target population as possible.

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Take Your Bible to Work Day

Posted on October 28, 2010 by Clive D. Field

In case you did not notice, last Monday (25 October) was the Bible Society’s ‘Take Your Bible to Work Day’, when Christians were asked to take a Bible to their place of employment as a statement of personal faith.

The day was conceived by the Society following a number of high-profile cases in which Christians found themselves in trouble for encouraging people to think about faith in God or for offering to pray with people in the workplace.

Ann Holt, the Society’s Director of Programmes, was quoted as saying: ‘while we recognise the plural nature of our culture, we are inviting people to take their Bible to work because we believe it is their right to do so in a free society. We believe the Bible’s message provides a framework for living the whole of life, and is not simply a resource for personal piety or a support for those who like religion.’

In connection with the day, the Society commissioned Christian Research and ICM to undertake an online survey among a representative sample of adult Britons. Fieldwork dates and sample size have not yet been reported by the Society.

According to the poll, while most Christians said they would feel fine in having their Bible at work, 43% would feel uncomfortable about actually getting it out to read during breaks and at lunchtimes, and almost a third were worried what work colleagues might think.

In fact, the survey found that only 14% of all workers expressed concern about Christian colleagues reading their Bible at work. Even 75% of atheists questioned said they would not consider it to be a problem. As many as half the workers claimed they would be happy to talk about the Bible with Christian workmates.

This post has been extracted from the limited information contained in the Society’s press release, available at:

http://www.biblesociety.org.uk/news/89/284/Take-Your-Bible-to-Work-Day/

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Names of Baby Boys in 2009

Posted on October 28, 2010 by Clive D. Field

The Muslim name Mohammed (meaning ‘one who is praiseworthy’) has become the most popular name for newborn boys in England and Wales, according to a reworking in today’s Daily Express and Daily Mail of 2009 data released yesterday by the Office for National Statistics (ONS). It moved up from third place in 2008 to supplant Jack, which had topped the list for the past fourteen years.

ONS actually has Mohammed in sixteenth position (up thirteen on 1999), with 3,300 babies given the name in 2009. However, this takes no account of the many different spellings of the name, each of which is ranked separately. By summing all twelve variations of the name in 2009, the newspapers produce a total of 7,549 occurrences of Mohammed, to head the list for the first time ever. This represents a 65% increase on the 1999 figure of 4,579.

In order of popularity, the variant ­spellings used during the year were: Mohammed, Muhammad (2,162 occurrences, in 36th place), Mohammad (1,073, in 62nd place), Muhammed, Mohamed, Mohamad, Muhamed, Mohammod, Mahamed, Muhamad, Mahammed, and Mohmmed.

There are widespread regional variations in the incidence of the name. For example, Mohammed alone (without the variants) came first in the West Midlands, fourth in London, and fifth in Yorkshire and the Humber. At the other end of the spectrum, it ranked 145th in the South-West.

Commenting on these findings, Murtaza Shibli, of the Muslim Council of Britain, said he was not surprised that Mohammed had become the most popular boys’ name. ‘Parents choose it because of their love of the Prophet Mohammed and they believe the name will bring happiness and abundance. Also, there’s a belief they will follow the good example of the Prophet.’

In reality, too much should not perhaps be made of all this. Even including all the variants, Mohammed represented 2% of given names for newborn boys in 2009. It was just one of 26,800 different names used in all.

Also, Mohammed (without the variants) has been around in England and Wales for some considerable time. According to the ONS spreadsheets, it first entered the top one hundred chart for boys’ names as early as 1924, as number 91. It has remained there ever since, being joined from 1954 by Mohammod and Mohamed. 

The most popular Muslim girls’ name in 2009 was Aisha, translating as ‘wife of the Prophet’. This was given to 541 babies, making it 101st on the list, up from 110th position in 2006.

The ONS data are available at:

http://www.statistics.gov.uk/statbase/Product.asp?vlnk=15282

The newspaper accounts can be found at:

http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/208029/Mohammed-is-top-boys-name

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1324194/Mohammed-popular-baby-boys-ahead-Jack-Harry.html

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Census 2011 – British Humanist Association Campaign

Posted on October 27, 2010 by Clive D. Field

The British Humanist Association (BHA), the national charity representing and supporting the interests of ethically concerned but non-religious people in the UK, has today launched ‘The Census Campaign’.

This is five months to the day before the next decennial population census of Great Britain asks people to make a voluntary declaration of their religious profession.

Under the tongue-in-cheek slogan, ‘If you’re not religious, for God’s sake say so!’, the campaign seeks to raise awareness of the potential dangers and damage arising from the non-religious not being accurately recorded by the census.

The BHA strongly feels that the 2001 census, the first to include the question about religious affiliation, ‘produced inaccurate and misleading data on religion, grossly undercounting the number of non-religious people and greatly inflating the number of Christians.’

According to BHA’s Chief Executive, Andrew Copson, ‘these misleading statistics are used to support policies that entrench religious privilege and increase discrimination on grounds of religion in our society …’

The BHA press release also quotes BRIN’s David Voas as saying: ‘In 2001 people tended to treat the census question on religion as a question about ethnic heritage. Their answers were interpreted very differently, though, by churches, journalists and policy-makers. Which box you tick on the census form may seem trivial, but the results do make a difference in public life.’

Following a preview to BHA supporters, the Census Campaign’s fundraising has already raised nearly 50% of its first target. The proceeds of this ongoing appeal (www.justgiving.com/census) will underpin national advertising.

The full BHA press release, on which this post has drawn, will be found at:

http://www.humanism.org.uk/news/view/682

The Census Campaign is also accompanied by an interactive website, which sets out the key arguments why people who are non-religious should respond to the voluntary question on religion, and why many of those who registered as Christians in 2001 (so-called ‘cultural Christians’) should respond by ticking ‘No religion’ in 2011. This is at:

www.census-campaign.org.uk

Additionally, there is a presence on Facebook and Twitter:

www.facebook.com/censuscampaign

www.twitter.com/censuscampaign.

It remains to be seen what impact the BHA’s campaign will have. However, it will be recalled that, in connection with the 2001 census, a push to persuade people to register as Jedi Knights (of Star Wars fame) had significant effect. In the end, more Jedis than Jews were returned.

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Senior Staff Recruitment in Faith Schools

Posted on October 25, 2010 by Clive D. Field

Recruitment to senior staff posts in Anglican and – especially – Catholic faith schools continues to be more problematical than average according to the sixteenth annual report on The State of the Labour Market for Senior Staff in Schools in England and Wales, prepared for the National Association of Head Teachers by John Howson and Almut Sprigade of Education Data Surveys at TSL Education Ltd.

The document analyses the outcomes for 1,499 posts on the Leadership scale (head teachers, deputy head teachers and assistant head teachers) advertised by publicly-funded schools in England and Wales between September 2009 and April 2010. Results are presented for each level of post separately for secondary, primary and special schools, and also by type of control of school (including Church of England and Roman Catholic).

Although the authors note ‘some signs of possible improvement’ in 2009-10, they remain critical of the persistent failure, over the past decade, of some dioceses to give adequate attention to the issue of succession planning for school leadership and imply that these shortcomings have not been exposed to the ‘intense public scrutiny’ to which local authorities would have been subject. The failure is particularly manifest in the high proportion of faith school posts which have to be readvertised.

For detailed figures and commentary, see:

http://www.naht.org.uk/welcome/resources/key-topics/leadership/unfilled-posts-leave-profession-on-knife-edge/

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