Comments on: The Risks of Being a Questioning Mormon

By: B Allen

B Allen — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 17:36:37 +0000

Good luck with survey. I asked my Gospel Doctrine class to close their eyes before I took a poll. With their eyes closed, I asked them how many believe the Book of Mormon to be a word for word translation. Out of 52 in the class 43 believe it is word for word. After class, the only comment I heard was “I can’t believe 9 people don’t believe it is a perfect translation.”

By: sister blah 2

sister blah 2 — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 04:02:22 +0000

’tis true, I put “I don’t know” for almost everything, even when I had a pretty good idea.

By: Little Sister

Little Sister — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 03:45:53 +0000

I believe they’ve done studies on standardized tests showing that women are significantly less likely than men to guess on a question if there is a penalty for wrong answers. As I was taking the survey, I felt there would be a very large penalty (making my Church membership look stupid) for wrong answers so I put “I don’t know” for most of them, even if I had a pretty good idea. (Sorry, I did feel like I was being set up, even after being linked there from BCC). That could throw off your results some. I saw in the comments that “sister blah 2″ did that as well.

Very good and interesting survey though! I am looking forward to the results.

By: AHLDuke

AHLDuke — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 12:34:39 +0000

I think its worth noting here at the Correlation Committee and CES sent out surveys to hundreds of Seminary and Institute teachers last fall. It was extremely detailed and focused primarily on what the teachers thought of the CES “teaching emphasis.” The problematic part of the survey being that my wife, who has taught Institute for 4-5 years now, had no idea what the teaching emphasis was. So strike one for survey design.

By: wry catcher

wry catcher — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 11:53:09 +0000

Hi JNS/RT,

I took your survey from the link posted on FLAK. I also saw all the semi-cranky low-grade complaints about the survey as well (sounds like they got worse in email). To be honest, I didn’t think much of the complaining because it is my experience as a sociologist and longtime researcher, people *always* complain about the way questions are worded, question your objectives (read: motives) and your sanity, and perhaps your parents’ child-rearing skills. To add religion into the mix, particularly something as touchy as BoM beliefs (and knowledge), well, lighted matches and piles of oily rags come to mind.

FWIW, I thought the survey was quite well done, thoughtful and well-written and clearly meant to be a very broad first test of some of the approaches and questions. There is nothing like a survey to get people’s suspicions raised, though. I recently got three pages of single-spaced, extremely detailed feedback on a 30-question canned proprietary survey (which was noted when it was sent out — we had no power to change the questions, they are an existing battery we bought in order to use the large database of norms they had at the country level) regarding people’s management style. This particular respondent was JUST SURE we were tracing their responses and comparing them to existing feedback mechanisms so that we could build a case against them…and this was the 538 reasons why the survey was not valid as a means to doing so.

Anyhow, I ramble. Good survey, nice first shot out of the gate, and I hope you’ll share all the findings.

By: Kade

Kade — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 02:06:24 +0000

JNS,

Thanks for doing the survey. I, like everybody else, look forward to the results as well as analysis. I think that I could tell generally why many questions were asked, but I think that I would enjoy a post on how you designed the survey and what you were targeting with the questions.

Thanks again for your time and effort. I think it is definitely easier to pick at someone else’s design rather than to conceive your own.

By: Jacob J

Jacob J — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 22:41:43 +0000

Oh, wait, I guess traditionally the Native Americans were thought to be Lamanites rather than Nephites. My bad.

By: Jacob J

Jacob J — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 22:40:54 +0000

By the way, I got a good laugh out of the “Did you have your professor look over the survey before putting it online” comment. Hilarious.

By: Jacob J

Jacob J — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 22:36:15 +0000

JNS,

I enjoyed the survey (as I do almost all surveys) and it made me wish I was trained to conduct my own surveys and analyze their results. I’m looking forward to your analysis of the results.

The hardest question for me was the Lehi descendents question. I wanted to answer 100% due to the reasoning you mentioned in #51, but feared that would be interpreted as a naive assumption that all Native Americans are “Nephites.”

By: Sarah

Sarah — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 22:15:36 +0000

I thought it was grossly unfair that you gave us four potential scripture sources and four questions — I felt compelled to shoehorn the four into producing four different answers. I was also more than a little sulky when the quiz failed to tell me whether I got the right answers or not (and the fact of the matter is that I will wonder about how good my spelling was for the rest of my life!)

But other than that, it was fun. And I totally forgot about the whole “ancestor of everyone” thing and instead focused on Eskimos walking across a land bridge ten thousand years ago, from my 5th grade science lessons about plate tectonics.

I feel bad for having failed to experience the appropriately vitriolic reaction to your survey, basically. You’re so fired, Bro. Nelson-Seawright. =P