Atheists respond in their thousands to ‘census’, but can we trust the data?
Posted: Sun, 20 Jan 2013 16:38 by Stewart Ware
In an attempt to capture demographic data on the non-religious, Atheist Alliance International has set up the Atheist Census. The aim is to capture each participant's religious background, educational level, age, sex and country of residence. In addition, participants are asked which non-religious term they would choose to refer to themselves, which include 'atheist', 'humanist' and 'freethinker'.
The census website was launched in early December 2012 but crashed several hours later owing to a denial of service attack. It is not possible to determine who was behind the attack, but naturally suspicions fall on religious groups. It was re-launched without incident a week later. The census appears to have no closing date, which means it has the potential to collect data indefinitely, funding permitting: it also solicits donations. At the time of writing, one month after the re-launch, the site had attracted nearly 170,000 responses from around the world.
The first thing to strike the casual observer is that this is not a census as normally perceived. A census according to one dictionary definition is "an official count or survey, especially of a population". Censuses are carried out by governments to gather information on the country's population, their location, age, household occupancy and so on. Participation is compulsory. This contrasts with the Atheist Census which is entirely voluntary with the participants being self-selecting. The census bears more relation to a survey conducted by a market research organisation, except that the former is 'opt-in' while the latter is 'opt-out'. A normal survey is driven by the organisation conducting it while this census is mainly driven by those who choose active participation.
Another difference is that the Atheist Census is entirely web-based with no user identification required other than an email address, which opens it up to potential abuse by participants using multiple email addresses, although this is mitigated by the time and trouble that people would experience in setting up each new email address, completing the census web form, waiting for the email confirmation email to arrive and responding by clicking on the link in the email. However, people who habitually use multiple email addresses will find the task less onerous.
http://www.secularism.org.uk/blog/2013/01/atheists-respond-in-their-thousands-to-census-but-can-we-trust-the-data
= new reply since forum marked as read
appreciated it.
Religion has always been and will most likely always be a wedge issue, but I hate to see how some use it divide on this site.
It's so counter-productive and a classically effective LW tactic. There is nothing about that that helps us reached our shared goals.
