Vampires in Twilight

Posted on July 25, 2010 by Clive D. Field

Vampires have been in the news a fair bit recently, mainly thanks to the release on 9 July in the UK of Twilight Saga: Eclipse, the third motion picture adapted from the Twilight series of vampire-based fantasy romance novels by the American writer Stephenie Meyer, and published between 2005 and 2008.

The series has sold over 100 million copies worldwide. In Britain, according to a YouGov poll conducted online among a sample of 2,469 between 11 and 13 May this year, 12% of all adults claim to have read at least parts of the Twilight books. They appeal most to the 18-34s (19%) and women (16%).

However, Meyer’s novels are dwarfed in popularity by J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter books, which 38% of the population seem to have read. Of those who have read both series, five times as many people prefer Harry Potter to Twilight. For the full results of this poll, see

http://today.yougov.co.uk/sites/today.yougov.co.uk/files/YG-Archives-Life-books-13.05.10.pdf

A second YouGov poll, on 29-30 June with a sample of 2,138, asked a somewhat tighter question about the readership of the Twilight novels. On this occasion, 9% of adults said that they had read at least one of the four titles, rising to 23% of the 18-24s, 13% of the 25-39s and 12% of women.

Many more, 21%, reported that they had seen either or both of the first two Twilight films, released in 2008 and 2009, including 45% of the 18-24s and 32% of the 25-39s. 8% of all respondents (but 24% of the 18-24s) said that they would see the third film at the cinema, 14% intended to wait until it is released on DVD and 66% indicated they would not watch the film at all.

Of those who had read at least one of the books and watched at least one of the films, 55% preferred the books to the films, 15% the films to the books, and 28% liked both equally. Among the same sub-sample, asked to choose between the characters in the films, 44% wanted to be a vampire, 16% a werewolf and 34% neither.

More generally, 53% in this second YouGov survey picked a favourite vampire-based film or television programme, including seven-tenths of the under-40s, with Buffy the Vampire Slayer, The Lost Boys and Blade very popular, in addition to Twilight. For the full list, see

http://today.yougov.co.uk/sites/today.yougov.co.uk/files/YG-Archives-Life-Twighlight-300610.pdf

Do these findings tell us anything about alternative religion, especially among the young whose rejection of much traditional religion is well documented? Are they really indicative of the numbers who believe in vampires in the dictionary sense of ghosts or reanimated bodies who leave their graves at night and suck the blood of sleeping persons? Or is this more about a craving for exciting fantasy far removed from the monotony and anxieties of everyday life?

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Child Abuse and the Catholic Church

Posted on July 24, 2010 by Clive D. Field

There have already been a couple of BRIN news posts reporting British public attitudes to the sexual abuse of children by Roman Catholic priests and alleged cover-ups thereof. ‘Pope Benedict on the Back Foot’ (20 April) featured a YouGov poll undertaken on 12-14 April. ‘Ongoing Public Relations Problems for the Vatican’ (30 May) dealt with a Harris Interactive survey from 27 April to 4 May.

Now, buried among the pre-general election political opinion polls conducted by Populus for The Times, BRIN has unearthed three further questions touching on the abuse issue. They were put to a half-sample (of 742 adult Britons aged 18 and over) interviewed by telephone on 6 April 2010. The data tabulations, including breaks by demographics, will be found on pages 62-65 of the following document:

http://populuslimited.com/uploads/download_pdf-060410-The-Times-The-Times-Poll—April-2010.pdf

Asked whether the Catholic Church had responded appropriately to the evidence of abuse by some priests, 65% said that it had not, compared with just 20% who thought that it had handled the matter adequately. The number holding a negative view rose to 73% among those aged 45-64 and the AB social group (upper, professional and higher managerial classes) and to 76% for Liberal Democrats.

78% agreed that the Catholic Church should give a fuller and clearer apology to the children who were abused, against 14% who disagreed. Most in favour of a better apology were Scots (81%), the over-65s (82%), the ABs (83%) and Liberal Democrats (89%). 

Still more, 87%, were convinced that any senior figures in the Church who knew about the abuse of children by priests and helped to cover it up should resign. Only 6% disagreed. A figure of 90% was recorded for the 18-24s, the 45-54s and Midlanders, with 95% for Liberal Democrats.

Although none of the Populus questions specifically enmeshed the Pope, in striking contrast to the YouGov and Harris polls, there can be little doubt that next month’s papal visit to Britain will be overshadowed by the abuse scandal to some extent.

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Getting Data on Scientology

Posted on July 23, 2010 by Siobhan McAndrew

Scientology appears to be in the news at the moment so it seems timely to offer some ideas on how to count Scientology in the UK.

Scientology isn’t recognised as a religion by the Charities Commission at present, although this may or may not change in future depending on how the Charities Commission define religion. On the one hand, the requirement for a religion to have a ‘supreme being’ was attenuated in the Charities Act 2006, but the need to demonstrate a ‘public benefit’ generated by each religion has been tightened. This is important for religious groups since such recognition would allow remission from local property taxation (the ‘business rate’).

Even so, 1,781 people in England and Wales used the ‘write in’ provision of the 2001 Census to state that they were Scientologists.

Little independent data are available on Scientology, although some estimates are available in Religious Trends 7 (2007/08). This estimated that in the UK in 2006 138,000 people had taken a Scientology course, while there were 15 active groups in existence. It was also estimated that there were 460 elite ‘Sea Org’ leaders in the UK, who had dedicated their lives to the movement (pp. 10.3, 10.4).

This leaves a few options for gathering further data. First, it’s possible to use Google Trends to look at how Scientology is trending among internet searches. Here are a couple of graphs to show how the number of UK searches including the word ‘Scientology’ has varied over the last 12 months and 30 days.

Google Trends is a fascinating tool which may help researchers gather data on less mainstream groups, or those which are less formally organised. Google Trends analyses a sample of Google web searches to estimate how many searches have been done for the term you are investigating relative to the total number of searches over time. The results are given as a Search Volume Index graph, and the data can be exported as CSV files (readable by Excel) for further analysis.

Two scaling options are available, ‘relative’ and fixed’. Relative scaling means that the results are scaled to the average search traffic during the time period selected. If you select ‘the previous 30 days’, the data for Scientology would be given relative to the average of all search traffic for Scientology during those 30 days. If there is a spike to 5, the traffic at that point is 5 times the average for the 30-day period.

ScientologyJunJuly2010

Scientology0910

 

 

 

Alternatively, in fixed mode, the data is scaled to the average traffic for that term during a fixed point in time, usually January 2004, which is set to 1.0. The scale basis then doesn’t change with time, which allows us to compare different time points. (This option however is only available as a CSV export rather than online viewing as a graph.)

Google Trends also provides a link to relevant news stories for the peaks, and thence to ‘News Archives’, both articles ranked by importance, and a timeline. This appears to plot the frequency of mentions in the news archives for the term, over time. For Scientology, the peak appears to be the mid-1950s, shortly after the organisation was established in 1964. However, this data is only available as an online graph and I’m not clear at this point how the graph was created – the results page notes that ‘dates associated with search results are estimated and are determined automatically by a computer program’. It would be interesting to have the data exportable as for Google Trends – but for now I’ll include an extract of the printscreen to illustrate how it looks (click to increase the size of the image).

 

ScientologyNewsArchive

 

Much more is possible with the Google Trends search. For example, you can restrict the search to specific regions, or compare trends for different search terms.

A further option is a tool to investigate ‘trending on Twitter’. We increasingly hear in the news that a certain term or hash is trending on Twitter, and it’s possible to actually look at the trends. Trendistic is one useful website. Here is a search using just the term ‘Scientology’, with the following results.

Trendistic

 

 

Scrolling over the graph shows that the number of tweets on the hour (6pm, 7pm, 8pm) are also available, although not displayed graphically. Charts can be embedded into users’ own websites, which is handy, although the data in CSV format (as with Google Trends) would also be welcome. Because the results for ‘Scientology’ look rather thin, I’m also giving an example of results for ‘Jesus’.

These look like gimmicks, but the serious point is that a researcher following news coverage of particular religious group, or investigating hard-to-reach groups, could use these tools alongside more qualitative approaches to flesh out their intuitions on the religion’s significance.

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Statistics of Catholic Religious Life

Posted on July 22, 2010 by Clive D. Field

The National Office for Vocation of the Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales has recently published the executive report and appendices for a study of Religious Life in England and Wales undertaken on behalf of the Compass Project, which is sponsored by a group of Roman Catholic Religious Orders and Congregations.

These documents contain some interesting new statistics about the ministry of vocations. They derive from a survey sent out this year to all 1,465 Roman Catholic religious houses in England and Wales. They represent 310 congregations of which 68% replied.

The report and appendices can be found at:

http://www.vocationevents.com/documents/ReligiousLifeExec.pdf

http://www.vocationevents.com/documents/Appendices1-3.pdf

For all the women’s congregations combined average annual entrants for the period 1999-2009 were 22, with a 60% average retention rate. For men’s congregations entrants numbered 14.5 each year, with 61% retention.

Only 3% of female and 8% of male religious were under 40 years of age, while 87% and 69% respectively were over 60. The latter figures included 49% of the women and 23% of the men who were over 80.

Both sets of data are disaggregated by vocations to contemplative and apostolic ministries, as well as by gender.

Appendix III contains a somewhat speculative calculation of the number of discerners, unmarried Catholics under 30 considering the possibility of a religious vocation, who went on to enter formation to the religious life.

From an objective standpoint, the statistics seem bleak, seemingly pointing to the eventual disappearance of the religious life in England and Wales. However, the tone of the report and associated press coverage (for example, Catholic Herald, 16 July) is far from being consistently downbeat.

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Battle of the Burka

Posted on July 22, 2010 by Clive D. Field

As might have been expected, the recent near-unanimous vote by the lower house of the French Parliament in favour of a ban on the wearing of full-face veils in public has prompted a further test of popular opinion on the subject in Britain, the fourth this year.

The survey was commissioned by Channel 5 News from YouGov. Fieldwork took place online between 14 and 16 July, among a representative sample of 2,205 adult Britons aged 18 and over. Computer tabulations of results are available at:

http://today.yougov.co.uk/sites/today.yougov.co.uk/files/YG-Archives-Pol-Channel5-burkhas-160710.pdf

Following a lengthy explanation about what the burka actually is, just one question was put to respondents: ‘To what extent do you agree or disagree with the following statement? “The burkha should be completely banned in Britain.”’

In other words, unlike other surveys, the question was not qualified by an explicit reference to a ban on wearing the garment in public.

In response, 67% of the total sample agreed with a ban on the burka (42% strongly and 25% somewhat), 27% disagreed and 6% had no opinion.

Support for a ban rose steadily with age, from just 46% among the 18-24s (with an identical proportion opposed) to 80% for those who were 55 and over. Figures for the intervening cohorts were: 55% for the 25-34s, 65% for the 35-44s and 71% for the 45-54s.

Other sub-groups among whom support for a ban exceeded 70% were: manual workers (71%), residents of the North of England and Wales (71% each), married persons (74%), the widowed (73%) and retired people (83%).

Disregarding the nuances of question-wording, approval of some form of ban on the burka has edged up in Britain from 52% in January to 57% in February to 62% in April-May to 67% in July.

Whatever the strength of public opinion, and notwithstanding the private member’s bill tabled by Philip Hollobone (Conservative MP for Kettering) which would make it illegal for anybody to cover their face in public, prospects for an early ban on the burka in Britain seem remote.

Damian Green, Immigration Minister in the Coalition Government, has stated recently that a ban on the burka would be ‘a rather un-British thing’, running contrary to the conventions of ‘a tolerant and mutually respectful society’.

Meanwhile, Environment Secretary Caroline Spelman has made a staunch defence of a woman’s right to wear the burka, on the grounds of freedom, even describing the garment as ‘empowering’.

It is likewise interesting to note that the lower chamber of the Spanish Parliament has just declined to follow France’s lead, rejecting the ban by 183 votes to 162. However, the lower house of the Belgian Parliament has voted in favour of a ban.

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Why Christians Give

Posted on July 20, 2010 by Clive D. Field

Most church leaders dislike talking about the need to give money, according to a newly-published survey on Christian giving. They tend to sweep financial issues under the carpet and fail to preach inspiring sermons on the subject of generosity. As a result, churchgoers are being given mixed messages by their ministers and churches are at risk of losing out on large amounts of potential giving. The same is often true of Christian charities.

The survey concerned was undertaken by Redina Kolaneci, Senior Fundraising and Stewardship Consultant with the Christian consulting group McConkey Johnston International UK, in partnership with the Evangelical Alliance, and among a random sample of 2,000 of the Alliance’s members in August-September 2009. The research was sponsored by Kingdom Bank, Trinity Wealth Management and David Potter Design.

The full statistical findings of the study are reported in Why Christians Give: Understanding the Hearts and Minds of 21st Century Evangelical Donors. This is available (price £43.95, inclusive of postage and packing) from McConkey Johnston International UK, 45 Maidenburgh Street, Colchester, CO1 1UB. However, a more qualitative four-page summary can be downloaded free from:

http://www.mcconkey-johnston.co.uk/files/u2/report_review__2_.pdf

In spite of the apparent timidity of their ministers, and the negative impact of the recession (which has reduced the giving of one in four), evangelicals remain a generous group. The average monthly donation of all respondents still represents 11.5% of their household income, of which 6.5% is given to local churches and 5% to Christian charities.

The top three causes supported by evangelicals in a typical month are Christian outreach charities (83%), international relief charities (59%) and healthcare and medical charities (31%). Although surfing the net is one of the top three leisure-time activities, few evangelicals actually donate online. Regular giving by cheque remains popular (perhaps reflecting the fact that the average donor is aged 55-64), with direct debit and standing orders also important. Four-tenths state they have provided for a charity or church in their will.

The most compelling reasons for giving are trust in a charity’s effectiveness and transparency about how the money is used, followed by donors having some kind of first-hand experience of a charity’s work and personal interest in the people or area where the charity is helping. Most donors desire a relationship with the charities they support. Being asked to pray regularly for a charity’s work and to respond to urgent financial needs are among the factors which strengthen a donor’s motivation.

Some comparisons are drawn with a similar study conducted by Kolaneci in 1997 on behalf of the Macedonian Evangelical Trust and reported in Who Gives to What and Why? Getting to Know Evangelical Donors – A Survey of Individual Giving to Churches and Charities Amongst Evangelical Christians in Britain (Bromley: Macedonian Evangelical Trust, [1998]).

Although evangelicals are a significant force in British Christianity, numbering approximately 2,000,000 according to one estimate, it seems rather doubtful whether the member organizations and individuals of the Evangelical Alliance responding to Kolaneci’s 2009 survey will have been statistically representative of this wider constituency. Neither is it likely that the giving of evangelicals as a whole will be typical of all Christians. Indeed, on the percentages quoted above, it would certainly appear to be far more sacrificial than average!

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Attitudes to new academy faith schools

Posted on July 20, 2010 by Siobhan McAndrew

The Academies Act 2010 is well underway, having received its Second Reading in the House of Commons on Monday 19 July, and with Education Select Committee days due this week.

A number of private and state religious schools have indicated interest in becoming state-funded academies, among about 1500 schools overall so far. For comparative purposes, the January 2009 Schools Census suggested there were 17,064 state primaries and 3,361 state secondaries in England.

The full list of schools indicating interest is available at the Department for Education website, and is updated intermittently. The list does not indicate directly which are schools ‘of a religious character’ – the British Humanist Association estimates that it is ‘over 300’.

The BHA has suggested that schools with a nominal faith tradition (such as Anglican primary schools without a strong faith ethos) will have no provision to change religious character to ‘none’ when becoming academies, even if the Governing Body were in favour.

However, non-faith schools will be able to adopt a religious character when becoming academies – perhaps under the influence of governors or potential sponsors – and this may lead to a proliferation of new faith schools. Its additional concern is that academies with a strong faith character will be freed from National Curriculum strictures, specifically with regard to the teaching of creationism and sex and reproduction.

The BHA commissioned a poll on public attitudes to the religious character of future academies, available here.

67% of respondents thought faith academies should be required to teach about other beliefs including non-religious beliefs. 23% did not, and 11% of respondents didn’t know.

The survey also asked,

‘If an academy were set up by a religious organisation, would you be very, quite, not very or not at all concerned that public money may be used to promote a particular religion or belief?’

35% were very concerned, 36% quite concerned, 16% not very concerned, 5% not at all concerned, and 7% didn’t know.

The survey was conducted 9-11 July 2010, by online interview, with 2000 respondents. The full polling report will be shortly available at http://www.icmresearch.co.uk/media-centre.php

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Jewish Attitudes toward Israel

Posted on July 17, 2010 by Clive D. Field

‘Jews in Britain strongly identify with and support Israel. They are ready to see Israel swap territory for peace and to talk with Hamas if it will advance the cause of peace. At the same time, they are concerned about Israel’s security, support the separation barrier/security fence and view the 2008/09 operation in Gaza as “a legitimate act of self-defence.”’

These are the central findings of what is described as the most definitive (albeit not the first) study ever conducted of the attitudes of Jews in Britain towards Israel. Entitled Committed, Concerned and Conciliatory: The Attitudes of Jews in Britain towards Israel, and written by David Graham and Jonathan Boyd, it was published on 15 July by the community’s leading research body, the Institute for Jewish Policy Research (JPR).

The report is available to download from:

http://www.jpr.org.uk/downloads/JPR%20Israel%20survey%20report%2015.pdf

The investigation, which was funded by the Pears Foundation, derives from the responses given by a self-selecting sample of 4,081 self-identifying Jews aged 18 and over living in Great Britain.

They completed an online questionnaire administered by Ipsos MORI between 7 January and 14 February 2010. Data analysis and report-writing was the responsibility of JPR.

Relative to the 2001 census and other (Jewish) sources, the sample is broadly representative of the Jewish community in many respects. However, it is somewhat skewed in terms of educational achievement, synagogue membership and secular/religious outlook, and the data have been weighted in these regards.

‘The survey shows that the vast majority of respondents exhibit strong personal support for, and affinity with, Israel: 95% have visited the country, 90% see it as the “ancestral homeland” of the Jewish people, and 86% feel that Jews have a special responsibility for its survival.’

Additionally, 82% state that Israel plays a central or important role in their Jewish identities, 72% categorize themselves as Zionists, 76% consider Israel to be relevant to their day-to-day lives in Britain, and 87% view British Jews as part of a global Jewish diaspora.

‘On the other hand, these strong levels of personal attachment to Israel do not prevent respondents from expressing criticism about Israel’s civil society: 74% think that Orthodox Judaism has too much influence in Israel; 67% say there is too much corruption in Israel’s political system; and 56% feel that non-Jewish minority groups suffer from discrimination in the country.’  

‘It further paints a portrait of a community that is highly-engaged with Israel, and that expresses predominantly dovish views on the key political issues: 78% favour a two-state solution to the conflict with the Palestinians; 74% oppose the expansion of existing settlements in the West Bank; and 67% favour exchanging land for peace. A majority (52% against 39%) favours negotiating with Hamas to achieve peace.’

Notwithstanding, ‘respondents are clearly sympathetic to Israel’s need to defend itself. Nearly three-quarters agree that “The security fence is vital for Israel’s security” and a similar number agree that Operation Cast Lead (the Israeli military action in Gaza in winter 2008/09) was “a legitimate act of self-defence.” Nearly nine out of ten respondents believe that Iran represents a threat to Israel’s very existence.’

‘Perhaps most significantly for a community that has long debated the acceptability of Jewish criticism of Israel in public, a slight majority (53% to 45%) believes that Jews living in Britain have the right to judge Israel, and nearly three-quarters believe that Jews should be free to speak their mind about Israel in the British media in at least some, if not all circumstances.’

In general, the more religious respondents claim to be, the more hawkish their stance on political and security issues. Those with higher levels of educational attainment tend to exhibit more dovish viewpoints compared with Jews with lesser education.

Commenting on the findings, JPR Executive Director, Jonathan Boyd, said: ‘Fundamentally, we found that most Jews feel a strong sense of connection to Israel … Jews in Britain are pro-Israel and pro-peace. Their hawkishness on some issues is typically motivated by a clear concern for Israel’s security, while their dovishness on others reflects a deep-set desire to see the country at peace, both with itself and with its neighbours.’

The report does not discuss in any detail how the attitudes of British Jews towards Israel may have changed over time. Readers interested in possible trends should consult JPR’s previous report from 1997 (based on data gathered in 1995): Barry Kosmin, Antony Lerman and Jacqueline Goldberg, The Attachment of British Jews to Israel.

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A Non-Source of Religious Statistics

Posted on July 16, 2010 by Clive D. Field

Government actually collects quite a lot of data pertaining to religion in Britain, but you would not think so if your only evidence was the Annual Abstract of Statistics.

The latest (and last) print edition (No. 146 for 2010) was published by Palgrave Macmillan on 15 July, edited by Ian Macrory.

So far as can be seen, it contains not a shred of religious data (unless you count the appearance of The Passion of Christ in the list of box office top 20 films released in the UK and Ireland in 2004-07).

By all means, check this assertion out for yourself at the following URL (where the book is freely available online):

http://www.statistics.gov.uk/downloads/theme_compendia/AA2010/aa2010final.pdf

A search under ‘religion’ on http://www.data.gov.uk likewise surfaces relatively little for Britain at the moment, other than the 2001 census (although the commissioned tables, of particular interest for religion, apparently still have to be requested); the Citizenship Survey; and the religious profession of members of the armed forces.

In particular, basic tables by religion from the Annual Population Survey/Labour Force Survey do not seem to be readily accessible. While it is fine (and commendable) that the datasets are available for secondary analysis via the Economic and Social Data Service, surely we need some aggregated statistics in an online published format?

Given that the Government is openly discussing the discontinuation of a decennial population census after 2011 (and, with it, implicitly the loss of the religious question), is it possible for Government statisticians to consider repurposing and making available online a wider selection of such religion data as they have from other sources?

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London Bombings – Five Years On

Posted on July 14, 2010 by Clive D. Field

The fifth anniversary of the London bombings has been marked by a YouGov poll for The Sun newspaper. It was conducted among an online sample of 1,424 adult Britons aged 18 and over on 4-5 July. Headline findings were published in The Sun on 7 July, but the full data can be downloaded from:

http://today.yougov.co.uk/sites/today.yougov.co.uk/files/YG-Archives-Pol-Sun-77-050710.pdf

In the five years since 7/7 25% feel that the threat of terrorism in Britain has increased, 53% that it has stayed the same and 17% that it has decreased. 76% rate further terrorist attacks on British soil as very or fairly likely.

Asked to think back to 7/7, and the reaction of British Muslims to the bombings, 33% recalled that it had made them feel more negative toward British Muslims, while for 60% it had made no difference. Conservative voters were twice as likely as Liberal Democrats (42% versus 20%) to have held adverse views, and the over-40s were seven points more negative than the under-40s (36% against 29%).

When questioned about the progress made by British Muslims to integrate into mainstream British society since 2005, four times as many feel that they have become less integrated than more integrated (43% compared with 10%). For 36% there has been no difference, and 12% are ‘don’t knows’. The expression of concern about less integration is most voiced by Conservatives (49%), residents of the Midlands and Wales (48%) and those aged 60 and over (47%).

This complaint about the lack of Muslim integration into British society finds echoes in other recent polls. In another YouGov survey in November 2009 21% considered that most Muslims in Britain led completely separately lives, with three-fifths saying many did so and just 13% believing most Muslims were integrated.

Similarly, interviewed by ICM in January 2008 about whether the Muslim community in Britain needed to do more to integrate, 56% agreed, with 24% deeming there had been sufficient integration and 9% too much.

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