Making a survey for a Christian school.
I'm making a poll for my old high school to assess both the students and faculty's knowledge of the Bible/Yahweh and current events.
My goal is not to convince them of any other point of view, this is more for me than them. My goal is that I'm hoping that the results will show that they know nothing about their faith.
It will be a fairly straightforward survey of ~50 questions, and I wanted to know of what you think I should put on there. It will consists mostly of multiple choice and checkbox questions.
This school is in the Bible Belt.
Note: This is not meant to convince them of an atheistic viewpoint. The school would not allow me to put forward this survey if I tried to do that. It is just a survey of how much thought they have put into their belief system.
Posted Mar 31, 2014, 8:37 PM UTC
That's not really a goal... What are you going to do with this information? How are you going to overcome confirmation bias?
As an aside, who the hell is going to subject themselves to a 50 question survey? You might think about limiting it to five to ten questions at most.
I went to the school, as saw how the faculty didn't teach any sort of critical thinking or how to defend ones faith other than the cliche 'checkmate, atheists' remarks heard so very often. I am making an assumption, based on my personal experience and with speaking with several other classmates on various topics, about how little we learned about our faith. This is for me, personally, and couldn't care how the results will turn out. although, i would be willing to place money on how much knowledge they have of the Bible.
Also, this is an all encompassing survey, from morality to shellfish to Genesis. A wide range of topics. This is impossible to do with 10 questions. I want to know where their belief is founded, and how they come to conclusions on these topics.
I must ask simple questions to learn these, semantics and moving the goalposts are pivotal in apologetic arguments. By asking simple questions, such as their stance on free will, I can then move forward with the implications of having free will on various topics.
I prefer not to put a generalistic belief on them, I want them to define their own. Something that they have not yet had to do. Learning each individuals belief is paramount to understand their belief system.
I don't think a survey would be a fair way to go about this. If I were an administrator I wouldn't give access to the school for someone who is conducting a survey other than for legitimate research purposes. Using the survey to confirm your own decision that their education is poor sounds less like research than polemics. If you have a range of answers you will consider acceptable that's not going to convince them that they are wrong. If they feel they need to give a long, nuanced answer and you insist that it be short, they won't consider the questioning fair.
I would suggest that you try a different format for getting your point across. Maybe a series of discussions sponsored by a school organization.
If you do the survey and then want to get them with the gotcha that they are ignorant, how are you going to get your results to them? If the school doesn't want you to promote atheism directly, once you are done with the survey they won't want you to distribute a one sided evaluation of those results. If they are, in your view, closed minded, I wouldn't expect your asking a survey to make them realize, on their own, that they have not been trained in critical thinking. They will probably consider their answers well thought out and they'll probably never hear your own conclusions.
Maybe I'm missing something here. But I lack the imagination to picture how you'd sell the administrators on the idea of your doing such a survey.
eI'm no doubt giving faire questions, and perhaps I should've included some questions I an already going to be asking. It will be basic questions like how much if the Bible they have read, and whether the Genesis 1 sorry is literal/metaphorical, etc. so, I will be staying away from questions that require nuanced answers. It will be unbiased a possible. And if they happen to be shown that they are in fact ignorant,I want to show them each argument for each "wrong"answer. I don't want them to become atheist, I just don't want them to be willfully ignorant Christians
That's better than the alternative, certainly. But by what standard are you going to judge right from wrong answers? Literalists think that Genesis I being literal is the only correct reading. Others think that it's wrong to take walking, talking serpents literally. What if it's a mix of literal and figurative truths? For instance, one could say that the creation by God part is literally true and that an Adam and and Eve are literally true in that there were two people first imbued with a soul and full human consciousness and the ability to comprehend the existence of God, but it didn't all happen in a few days all at once from literal clay and ribs. That's hard to reflect in a yes or no question.
How are you going to get them the graded answers with the full discussion of all possible variations of each answer?
I used to work for a research company that did phone surveys covering all of america and sometimes canada. South pacific to the atlantic. 50 is only a little on the high side. Most surveys averaged 30-60 questions plus demographics. California always had the longest worded questions and the most questions, imagine an hour long survey over the phone, i never understood why californians would sit on the phone that long.