YouGov poll cheered me up...

[matgb]

Righty ho. Ages ago, I signed up for YouGov, and currently am nowhere near the threshold needed to get a payment from them; the old weighted sample thing means that internet geeks are much less likely to get selected than, for example, retired ladies, because they're sampling from internet users. But, I actually do enjoy doing the surveys for the most part (although BrandIndex I avoid), and today one of the pages worth of questions really cheered me up, so, given the limitations of LJ polls, I've replicated it under the cut.

I've made results viewable to just friends, because some might not like ticking boxes about their faith for anyone to know, I'm more than a little open about my atheism/Humanism, just as el_steplador is very open about her Anglicanism (and appears to be enjoying the pilgrimage muchly, go check her journal), but, y'know.

[Poll #964678]

Yes, I'm aware that this is a completely unrepresentative sample, but it's curiosity rather than any sense of scientific enquiry.

Now, why did this cheer me up? They've specifically given options for 'atheist' and 'agnostic' for both belief and background. I ticked atheist and agnostic respectively, as my father is an Agnostic of the Dawkins school, and my mother is a soft Anglican. With any luck, this YouGov poll will give food for thought to a lot of politicians; I really like the background versus belief question, last survey I saw of relevence seemed to indicate people said they were Christian, but in fact didn't believe, it's just a background thing; I'd love to see a similar distinction made in the next UK census.

Oh yeah, if you fancy signing up for YouGov, and are in the UK, sign up here and they'll give me money as well as you for the first three months. Get paid to tell people what you think, for a reputable polling organisation, gotta be a good plan...

Comments

[miss-s-b.livejournal.com]

You didn't put enough characters for the "please write below" box :P

* bes verbose *

[matgb]

Well, yeah, because I couldn't think of any religions with a name longer than 50 characters; you could've just put relX / RelY y'know...

[miss-s-b.livejournal.com]

You should know that there's always some gobby twat who wants to make things complicated. There always is when I post a poll, anyway ;)

[matgb]

Well, yes, I know, and I wish LJ would make the display for input fields a bit better, but can't have everything...

[foxfirefey]

I know! I wanted to explain why I put Mormon instead of selecting Christian--Christian is not very specific, there's so many different flavors, like Catholicism. Someone raised Catholic has a very different background from someone raised, say, Baptist.

[poifaerie.livejournal.com]

I ticked the "Christian" box but then put Charismatic church in the "other" bit to get around that problem. I like the use of the word flavours, though!

[matgb]

I guess, to an extent, that's partially a British thing, over here there are two main denominations, Anglican and Catholic, and then the other groups, which have members but not huge numbers.

You're right, of course, but for a UK based survey being Christian counts for more than a specific denomination, for the most part.