Matt W. from NCT has been working on a Survey of Mormon Culture and Belief. He has agreed to guest post the survey here. The final analysis will be over at www.newcoolthang.com so be sure to visit there to see the results.
Ok, so here is our new survey, which focuses on Mormon culture and beliefs. The triple focus of this survey is to measure faith commitment, church engagement, as well as cultural belief on a variety of topics. The survey is 60 questions in length, and so may take as long as 6 minutes to complete. Some of the questions, due to their connection with obscure doctrine, may seem offensive to you. If this is the case, we apologize in advance.
Our goal is to get 5000 responses to this survey, and we will attempt to share this survey via Facebook, this blog, and email invitations. As soon as we feel the responses are no longer coming in, we will prepare our findings and publish them.
To invite friends to take the survey, just pass them this link via whichever method you prefer:
http://www.surveygizmo.com/s/271583/lds-survey
Thanks for your participation and support.
Comments 17
moomost of the questions were the same as on my workplace satisfaction survey.
I’ll probably forget by the time the survey closes to go check, so it would be nice to have a quick post on here when the results are available.
Sadly, many of the questions on the survey left me without a satisfactory response option. How can you ask “Does Heavenly Mother exist?”, then “Is Heavenly Mother equal to Heavenly Father?”? For people who don’t believe or who are not sure about HM, how can they even answer the second question?
Really, I think the intent of the survey is good, but I don’t think there was appropriate space provided in the response options to accommodate other opinions, especially as it pertains to doctrinal (as opposed to practical) matters. I suspect that the validity of the responses to the survey will be called into question as a result.
re #3 I had to answer “neutral” to a lot of questions I simply don’t know how I feel about them….
I think the question of Adam is God is misleading because there is so much variety of believe for what that means, especially the two Adam/name title theory.
The question that heavenly father and heavenly mother are equal in every way is misleading because the question does not deal with complexities of difference of roles. Equality is a broken notion because role differences are different than equality.
The idea that women having priesthood because they are endowed and participate is flawed in the same way because roles of females and males are different, and as a veil worker in the temple, I have a calling to have the ability to do what I do. This is not the same as priesthood. A woman doing what she does in the temple has a calling to do so. That is a role issue attached to that calling, not priesthood. So in essence, it does not take into account the other explanations for the idea that women can participate in oridinances by virtue of callings and this has nothing to do with priesthood.
Other flaws in the survey are as a result of similar problems because the questions are set up with the notions of liberalism, not from the standpoint of the complexity that should be accounted for that someone coming from a more conservative viewpoint would consider appropriate.
The notion of women’s equality in general neglects any discussion of the issue of Roles. It assumes that women SHOULD have everything men have, but that ignores the fact that men will never have everything women have, and cannot, because that is physically impossible. This does not mean that women should not have the priesthood. That is a question for the Lord to decide through revelation. But the fact of the matter is, even if the Church went “all the way” to give them priesthood (which perhaps may happen someday and I am not against it if it does), there will never be true equality because there will always be some role difference somewhere no matter how far the Church goes to give women all it possibly can.
@April: I did the same, but “neutral” doesn’t really capture how I feel about some of those questions, because I’m not neutral, I have an opinion, its just that it isn’t represented in any of the response options. To me, “neutral” also implies ambivalence toward a particular issue, and I certainly don’t feel ambivalent about all the things for which I was forced to answer “neutral”. Finally, I don’t think that the wording of the questions were considered carefully enough, as I’m sure there are many more ways of interpreting words and concepts therein than the survey authors intended, based on the response options they included.
re #5 I very very strongly disagree with you. But in an attempt to not start an all out fight on this blog I will refrain from posting my opinions on these matters…
The results are going to super biased based on how the survey is being distributed.
Interesting selection of questions. I answered “neutral” to many. Some becasue I don’t know the answer one way or another and some because I no longer attend church meetings but still consider this to be my faith.
If those here are a example of the respondents, then I’m not sure how valuable the survey will be.
I started it, but I’m not really sure how to answer the questions given that I’m an unbelieving member of the church. So, for example, “my faith gives me inner peace” might be true, but since my faith doesn’t have anything to do with church doctrine, would it be misleading to say I agree?
I got myself all confused and had to stop!
Thanks for posting this here. I appreciate the participation.
I didn’t even know whether I should participate, but since the first question asked whether I considered myself LDS, to which I could truthfully answer “no”, I figured I’d be part of a control group.
I had a lot of trouble with the “cosmology” questions because a lot of the differences between LDS and CofChrist stem from how the cosmology relates to the theological interpretation of of JS’ early experiences. On the otherhand, the question about women in the priesthood was simple for me.
April, I am not into a fight with you either….
Anytime you have a survey where participants self-select, it’s not going to be scientifically valid. And since most people who answer it are likely going to be of a liberal persuasion (myself included), it’s not going to be an accurate representation of what the church as a whole believes. But it was a neat little time-waster and a fun diversion.
Are the survey participants only coming from those that find this board and the link…or will it include others in addition?
Heber13: We’ve put it up at a few different boards, pushed it out to a bunch of groups at facebook, tweeted it, emailed it, and done everything we could to encourage others to do the same. If you’d like, feel free to spread the word. We’re hoping to get as many participants as possible.
I think this survey should have either narrowed the population parameters, or improved the questions to include a wide range of belief persuassions. As it stands, I think the distortions will probably be pretty high due to people like me who identify as a part of Mormon culture but reject Mormon theology. For example:
Question – Do you believe in Heavenly Mother?
Well, I can’t say that I do – but I can’t say that don’t. Hell, I don’t know if God is married.