Where do you fit in Barna's latest Bible survey?

[billvau]

I disregard Barna polls on "Christianity" because their definition is so loose that almost every Western-religion person can say that they fit. BUT, this poll is about the Bible, so has a narrow range of definition (even if one uses an almost messaged-out version).

So, where do you fit in this survey? Other comments?


https://www.barna.com/research/state...-top-findings/


God bless,

[kygen]

#4 is a good one; we need more interest/critique/study into religious texts. Even if one is not religious, it shows paths of human history/thought.

[mossy]

i thought it was interesting till i got to the research methodologies and realized this was a biased study. the researchers wanted the study to generate specific results and used phone interviews to artificially boost the numbers of target questions.

if the target population of the study is everyone in the USA, 2,040 participants is not a sufficient sample size. more importantly though, 1,004 participants were not asked all the studies questions because the phone interview only contained a subset of questions while the online survey contained all questions in the study.
"A subset of the questions was asked in the telephone survey, while all of the questions were included online."

nowhere in the methodologies does it list what or how many questions were left out of the phone survey so there is no way to tell exactly how skewed the results are.
"The use of two methodologies provides a larger sample size and ensures greater representation among all age groups, ethnicities and socioeconomic groups."

true, but combining the data gathered by the phone interviews with the data collected from online surveys will generate biased results because half the people in the study did not have access to all the questions. the phone interviews were used to boost up responses for certain questions, not generate useful data from participants unable to respond to the online survey.

the researchers wanted the results to say something so they used the subset of questions used in the phone interview get the results they wanted by picking target questions to boost up by making them available in both the survey and interview while suppressing other questions results by making them available in the survey only.

[illuminate10]

Suburb dweller
Gen Xer
#7 The Praise/thanks to the Creator.

[Deedle]

Well I've read it several times and studied it several times a week for 40 years.

[CVShooter]

The questions can be interpreted a number of ways that give little real information about the survey respondents. For example, I would say that I am a Bible user and curious about what the Bible says at times, but it's neither out of religious devotion nor out of respect for its supposed authority. Another example is that I also feel that the Bible applies to life but I'd say the same about the Quran, Lotus and just about any cultural mythology.

If I had to guess, I'd say that the creators of the survey were trying to cast as wide a net as possible to show that America is still largely Christian in orientation. While that may be mostly true, the survey doesn't remotely prove that.

Then there's the whole issue of stated vs revealed preferences. Once again, what one believes to be true in words and what one truly believes in deeds are often worlds apart. The survey only shows stated preferences. Behaviors would probably show an entirely different perspective.