I received an interesting email from a social psychology professor at Augustana College in the US.
His name is Dr. Mark Vincent and this is some of what he has to say about a survey he is attempting to conduct.
Seems a bit ironic, but I’m truly having a difficult time getting Christians to lend me a hand with a survey about Loving Thy Neighbor.
I believe passionately in this work, but simply cannot do it without Christians who are willing to help out.
I think contacting bloggers is a good idea, many of us don’t mind taking a few minutes, surveys and quizzes are part and parcel of this medium.
With this study I am attempting to determine how people view their Christian faith, and the ways in which that faith relates to daily behaviors.
I haven’t contacted Professor Vincent yet, so I don’t know if this is politically affiliated in any way. I don’t suppose for most of us it matters.
Take a look - and make your decision whether or not to particate.
Update: I contacted Dr. Vincent and he has discovered that my comment section can help us help him and save a lot of emailing.:^) What he is attempting is near and dear to most of our hearts. I found the survey questions facinating.
Let’s give this guy a look at what bloggers can do eh? A blog burst would sure help him get the job done. Blog on!
32 Responses to “Attitude and behaviour”
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Bene,
I had a look at the survey and completed it but wanted to send some comments. Email was returned as address was wrong. Checked your blog and survey again and both were the same. Any ideas?
Shalom,
Jan
I just emailed Dr. Vincent and suggested he comment here.
Here is his email: Psvincent@augustana.edu
It worked earlier.:^)
Sorry for the broken email… I will check that first thing tomorrow. In the meantime, psvincent@augustana.edu will definitely work. I’d be more than happy to correspond by email regarding questions/comments.
Thanks very much for the kind words, Bene. I really do appreciate your help. I would guess that I’ve contacted upwards of 25-30 individuals at websites, mailing lists, religious organizations, etc. You are the first to respond to my request. I’m really appreciative.
With regard to the research, there honestly is no political affiliation whatsoever. As you can probably tell from looking at the survey, I simply want to know whether there is a connection between one’s perspective on Christianity and how one lives out one’s faith.
The research is pretty low budget– no gov’t funding whatsover, no sponsorship. That’s the beauty and promise of web-based research– those of us on low budgets (or no budget, as is my case) have access to respondents that would have required substantial funding and/or access to large research institutions in the past. The only catch is somehow drawing attention to the web studies– and you’ve helped a great deal on that score.
Thanks again.
Mark
Thanx for the tip, Bene. Good survey, and I encourage others to take it. I’ll post the link on my blog as well.
Dr. Vincent - I would be interested in reading your findings. I assume this is your summer research project. Do you intend to publish?
Absolutely, the work is intended for publication in profession journals. I will also be posting a summary of the results on the same site, once the survey is closed.
This project is the culmination of a sabbatical that I just finished.
Our pleasure Dr. Vincent. We haven’t had a good blog burst in awhile, and I’ve no doubt readers and fellow bloggers will be happy to link up and also take your survey.
blog burst:A blog burst is a way of creating memory on the internet, by making it coherent for a moment. It is when writers on websites and blogs write on a particular theme on a particular day, and someone links all of them together - which gives readers a chance to survey the conversational territory - and keeps the page with the links available, so that people can look back on that one moment.
I just wanted to say I have linked to the survey, I’m not sure how to “trackback” to this post but I figured my comments would suffice.
LoL. I don’t know how to either. Good post.
Thanks.
Your highlighted name in you comment takes us to you post. Merci. Blog on!
Interesting survey. I did have a problem with the question about praying for people I know who are not Christian. I don’t pray for people I know who are not Christian to *become* Christian, but in matters of health or trouble, you bet I pray for my non-Christian friends just as I would my Christian ones. I really wasn’t sure how to answer those questions.
I took the survey too, and found it fair to say that the questions offered enough responses. Thank you for posting this, Bene!
Thanks for the feedback, Mumcat! Some questionnaire items that might seem problematic are found on “standard” measures that I’m using (i.e., someone else wrote them). Since they are well-established, I pretty much have to use them “as is”, warts and all.
That said, some of the items are new ones that I’m developing, and I’ll take a careful look at the issue you raise. Possible alternative interpretations of an item are something I need to be aware of… The kind of feedback you’ve given is extremely helpful.
Thanks again for taking the time to help out. If you or others have more questions/comments about particular items or issues in the survey, I would also enjoy corresponding about it by email. In fact, in order to allow each person to react to the items without bias or preconceptions, it would probably be best if detailed discussion of the survey contents took place via email. I’m certainly *very* interested in discussing the survey and its purpose (this work is something that I do believe in passionately), but methodologically it is best not to talk about it “in front of” those who haven’t had a chance to take it yet.
I can’t tell you how pleased and excited I am to have gotten so much help. Thanks!
Interesting survey. I have to admit I felt a little shame when I answered the “how I am” as opposed to the “how it should be” questions. There was more contrast there then I would have liked. I won’t discuss this any further as I don’t want to discourse “in front” of others who have not taken it yet. I’ll be very interested in the results.
For those might be interested, I have 195 completed surveys as of right now, and 153 of them were completed following Bene’s post. I’m hoping for a sample of 500– looks like I’m already 40% of the way there. A heartfelt thanks to all who have taken the time to complete the survey (you’ll find my picture in the dictionary under “indebted”).
Dr. Vincent:
You are quite the reminder of why I like this medium so much. What a great group of people I blog with!
I really hope you reach your goal.
After an initial deluge, it looks like the the number of visitors to the survey has dropped off quite a bit (yesterday morning, 41 people stopped by between 9 and 11am; today, only 4 people checked it out in the same time frame).
My total count at this point is 225 completed surveys. This is a pretty large number, but the statistics that I’ll need to do require very large numbers (closer to 500 would be optimal). If you have ideas about other ways I might reach Christians on the ‘net, please post or email me!
Thanks, for both the help on the surveys and for introducing me to the wonderful world of blogs!
Mark
I’d give it some more time… as the link get’s picked up by other people.
I took the survey, but I’m going to chime in with Mumcat on some of the questions, the intent seemed in conflict with the options. I hesitated to answer some questions because the answers didn’t take into account all the possibilities.
I had a particularly hard time with the first set of questions about what common attitudes poor people had.
Some other suggestions, the survey service was clunky. Having to enter your identifier each time made it inconvenient, and having to click an extra link to go to the next page was also an annoyance. Both items could have been avoided. You might try looking for a better survey host next time.
Anyway, hope the suggestions help. Good luck with your work.
Jason,
Boy, I hate to “cop out” twice with the same excuse, but there are VERY few previous studies that have looked at some of these issues– and I borrowed 3 existing measures from one of such recent study. I agree completely that it can be hard to answer some of the questions, but overall I didn’t find sufficient justification to reinvent the wheel. So, I adopted it warts and all.
For what it is worth, I’ve never seen a study on topics like this where every question made complete sense, was free of alternative interpretations, and was easy to answer. Some are definitely better than others, and they can *always* be improved. In terms of research, I had to make the tough call of staying with an established measure that seemed “o.k.”, or going to the trouble of creating a new one. As it is, the survey you took does include one new measure that I’m developing– the previous measures on that particular topic were “that bad.” I thought it best to take it one step at a time.
It is also relatively easy to put a survey together, and it packages the data quite nicely as well. I’m aware that HTML programming can arrange for unique identifiers to automatically be passed along as one “submits” a page… I’ll see if I can find someone who knows how to do that on the next one.
Very good feedback regarding the survey software. I’ll look into it. The one I’m using has the advantage of being absolutely FREE.
I took the survey for a test drive before opening it, and it felt clunky but functional to me… sort of like my car.
I guess I’d call it “serviceable.”
Mark
I’m not being much help, but a friend of mine recently used a free survey site that did a better job. If I can find it I’ll post the link here.
Had similar problems with the survey questions as others have cited. I answered all the questions about the attitudes of “poor people” with a 3, since I don’t think I can generalise about “poor people” as a homogenous group!
Also didn’t know how to answer the Q about “praying for non-Christians” - of course I pray for them, as for non-Xians. Duh. But not to be “saved.”
And I had a problem I haven’t seen mentioned yet answering the demographic Qs, because we don’t do membership in my faith community. I don’t belong to a denomination or a church but I attend one several times most week. I consider myself a participant, not a member.
Also generally had a problem with the word “religious.” I would have answered quite differently if the word “spiritual” were used instead. Don’t know if this will matter for your results.
I like the overall concept, of looking at the relationship between people’s expressed faith/beliefs and their actions and beliefs towards “the least of these.”
I did feel that several of the questions assumed a Protestant/ non-Christian dualism that was hard to work around. For example, the question on “sharing my faith;” I wanted to say that I do share my faith, but suspected that it would be interpreted as “proselytism,” rather than, for example, prayer and service.
Also there were many questions about Bible studies, but few about, for example, prayer groups or prayer services.
I’m still here… but I’ve emailed Jason (via his link) directly. I’ll enjoy discussing this issue publicly very soon!
I’m up to 420 respondents. Thanks to Jason and all who have given their time to this effort.
I took your survey and I’ll be curious to see the results. As a christian who teaches in a high poverty environment, I’m always very frustrated by the lack of interests of christians in helping the “poor.” In fact, when talking about poverty in my church (and its complexity), one man actually suggested, albeit jokingly, that people in poverty should be “sterilized.” Yikes!
Yikes is right!
We allow government, business and culture to criminalize the language of poverty and by extension criminalize the poor.
What scares me is how unaware we are of these beliefs and attitudes creeping into our lives.
Sometimes I try to talk to the person who makes a callous comment like that, I certainly pray for them, but sometimes I just grieve.