--- Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
> To come at the fascinating issue of church
> attendance in a slightly
> different way, a recent Gallup Panel survey asked
> Americans about
> their usual church-attending behavior, and followed
> up with an open-
> ended question asking them to explain their
> attendance or lack
> thereof in their own words.
[WS:] These are the so-called 'sin and motherhood" questions i.e. questions yielding conventional and predictable answers. I think they are a waste of time and money. I would do it differently, for example ask the respondents to list people they know (or a certain number of them), and then rank how well they know them how often they meet them, and how get got to know them, where they meet, etc. Or alternatively, do a time use survey and each tim ethey report meeting someone, ask follow up questions similar to those listed above.
This way they can actually record the frequency of social contacts and then link those contacts to church memebrship - and compare it with social connections linked to other types of institutions.
Wojtek
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