New Home


Time is a hungry beast. Jo moved from here to Posterous, and Posterous got gobbled up and spat out. Jo is not actively blogging these days, but his posts have been archived at Jess Harpur's Digital Pasture where the links, images, videos, and audio have been restored


Tuesday, March 22, 2011

What Kind Of A Question Is That?

In a new poll, when asked the UK 2011 Census question ‘What is your religion?’, 61% of respondents in England and Wales ticked a religious box* (53.48% Christian and 7.22% other) while 39% ticked ‘No religion’.

However, when asked ‘Are you religious?’, only 29% of the same people said ‘Yes’ while 65% said ‘No’, meaning over half of those whom the UK census would count as having a religion said they were not religious. A fine example of how a 'leading question' affects the answer?

Oddly, in the same poll, less than half (48%) of those who ticked ‘Christian’ said they believed that 'Jesus Christ was a real person who died and came back to life and was the son of God'.

All together now [in your best North of England accent]: "E, lad. There's nowt so queer as folk!"

In other circumstances, you could take a leaf from Lynryd Skynyrd's book...

Lynyrd_Skynyrd_-_03_-_Don't_Ask_Me_No_Questions.mp3 Listen on Posterous
...but you don't have that luxury if you receive a UK Census form. Those who refuse to complete the census questionnaire, or include false information, could face a £1,000 fine.

* Is a 'religious box' the same as a 'confessional'?

Lynryd Skynyrd - Second Helping at Amazon UK

Posted via email from Jo S Wun on Posterous

No comments:

Post a Comment