Update: Survey of Trinitarian Belief (Dale)

Feb 052008
 


Who’s next? Anyone? Anyone? (sound of crickets chirping)

So far, the Survey of Trinitarian Belief (background) has been a failure. We simply have not been able to get enough people to take it.

We chose as a target population seminarians, hoping that enough theology profs would want to participate with their classes in the survey (profs get to see the aggregate results for their classes, which makes a neat discussion starter). This hope was in vain. After maybe 2000 emails, and sending letters to literally every seminary in the US and Canada, exactly 9 profs registered courses, but most of them didn’t follow through, as we got only 20 seminarian respondents, from all their classes combined. This is disappointing – we hoped the profs would be curious enough to follow through. Not so.

So while we’ve had 200 respondents so far (as of 1/11/08), only 20 of those have been from our target population.

In sum, it looks like we’ll never get usable results without an injection of $, to provide some necessary motivation. Problem is, we have no funding whatever. Hopefully, I’ll be putting in a proposal or two for funding some time this spring.

In sum, the Survey site is still open, through at least Spring of 2008. (Simplified URL: http://trinities.org/survey) If you’re a seminary prof and want to join in, please contact me and I’ll send you step-by-step directions. If anyone has funding suggestions, please contact me. Everyone is welcome to take it, as we’re interested in more than seminary students, ultimately.

Technorati Tags:

Survey of Trinitarian Belief Extended through Fall 2007 semester

Apr 242007
 

Survey participation so far has been minimal. While all are welcome to take the Survey, we’re currently trying to focus on one population, with the aim of getting a statistically valid sample: students in seminaries, or studying Christian theology at the graduate (in the UK “postgraduate”) level.

We are as yet far from having enough data. The Survey will thus continue through Summer 2007 and the Fall.

We need seminary and university professors to join in! Only by enough professors asking their whole classes to take the survey, can we get a decently random sample of students. If you’re a professor in a seminary, or teaching Christian theology at the graduate level, please email us using the form on the Help page above, and we’ll send you instructions on participating. What’s in it for you? You get to see the Survey data from your classes (individually AND all together), as well as the data from all respondents so far, in an easy to read graphical form. This is a great item for class discussion, or for simply stimulating your own thinking about the Trinity.

Technorati Tags: , , ,

News – major Survey of Trinitarian Belief

Apr 092007
 

We’ve just launched a project that has been a couple of years in the making: the Survey of Trinitarian Belief. It’s an attempt to measure how the views of the Christian public do or don’t line up with contemporary trinitarian theories, as well as historical theories, and creedal statements.

Anyone can register and take the survey. That’s fun and thought-provoking, but that won’t give us a valid random sample. So we’ve decided to focus on an interesting population: seminarians (and anyone else studying theology at the graduate level). This first phase of the survey, which will last the rest of this semester (until the end of May) is an attempt to find out what they think. If there are future phases, maybe we’ll do other manageable groups. (Pastors? Students and Christian colleges? Mega-church members?)

To do this, we need professors! Continue reading »

Switch to our mobile site