Personality and Belief in God Survey

[cleanhippie]

The following research survey consists of questions about your personality, beliefs, and life experiences. Participation is voluntary and you may choose to exit at any time. Upon completion of the survey, your responses will be submitted anonymously and there is no way that they can be linked back to you.

This research is being conducted by Matthew Baker, a postgraduate student at the University of Warwick. Should you have any questions or concerns, please write to [e-mail].

http://www.godsurvey.org/

[Adsos Letter]

1. Interesting survey...

It will be interesting to see the relationship between years spent with father/mother and the relationship quality with father/mother expressed in the results.

[dmallind]

5. Even in surveys, social norms will dictate answers

It is socially unacceptable to see your parents as deeply flawed unless they were abusive monsters. These results will be way too unrealistic in this area - guaranteed. Why is it nobody you talk to has parents who are a bit dickish in some ways but not vicious tyrants. About 90% of the people I know fall into this category, and many of them have kids. Do people really have rose colored glasses about their own progenitors, or is it as I suspecct that they don't want to admit their faults?

[rurallib]

2. It would be interesting to see what his findings are

If you could try to post them when he is done, i would be quite curious to see what he says.

[DesertFlower]

3. done. it was long.

[saras]

4. Eleven minutes for me

A whole set of questions are those fake dualisms - are you more A. sociable or B. reserved., and for those I answered essentially at random, as if I "stop and think" about answering them, I get different answers every time, depending on which particular image pops to mind at first. So I don't have a whole lot of faith that the end result will be that interesting. I felt like the questions never touched any of the important aspects of my life experiences, and that I could easily make up a story of someone radically unlike me in most aspects, who would answer the questions in about the same way.

[John1956PA]

7. Your observation is correct. What does it mean to be more "warm-hearted" than "practical" anyway?

That question was among several which juxtaposed unrelated qualities and asked the responder to chose the one which better described him or her. I doubt the value of such questions. Nonetheless, it is useful to have surveys which gauge the public's religious adherence versus its non-belief.

[saras]

8. Actually there is a purpose to the questions - and they ARE trick questions

In the world of statistical polling, it doesn't MATTER whether the questions make sense. What matters is that there is some measurable correlation between how people, IN GENERAL, answer the question and some OTHER characteristic.

If you're trying to identify, say, Republicans, in an environment where you can't just ask "are you a Republican?", then what you do is find a question that Republicans answer one way and Democrats another, that - here's the important part - is NOT identifiable as a partisan political position by the vast majority of your respondents. It doesn't matter what subject, or even whether the question makes sense. What matters is that it correlate reliably with something else.

So when I run into more than a few questions like that (I expect a few in a good poll, because one of their uses is to identify deliberate liars), I start wondering what they're really looking for. But sometimes they're just badly thought out questions, and sometimes they work for sheeple, but pretty much every thinker is going WTF?

The worst example I know of is the Meyers-Briggs quackery.

[NMMNG]

9. The irony is...

My answers to those questions would have been the same when I was a Christian as they are now that I am again an atheist. If they're trying to discern some personality/belief correlation they failed with me.

[saras]

12. Yep. They're testing for something, and you don't get to know what it is.

If you actually want to learn something, that's the way you have to do polls, otherwise too many people fuck with them. On the other hand, push polls are dramatically different, and obvious in their own way too. (ex. which of these three policies would be best for stopping illegal immigrants from entering America? ...)

[dtexdem]

6. Did it.

I hated the forced-choice with only two options -- left a lot blank and then answered only so I could go on with the survey. As a result, my answers to those items are much less reliable.

[Iggo]

10. Done.

At the beginning of the survey I was all "Oh, cool. this is great!"

By the end of it, I was all "Fuck 'em."

[bananas]

11. Privacy problems with that site - "Get the Survey Monkey Off Your Back"

The site didn't work for me - requires javascript. Why?
Decided to see if there are any privacy problems with the site,
found this article:

http://www.news.software.coop/get-the-survey-monkey-off-your-back/878

Get the Survey Monkey Off Your Back
January 20, 2010 by mjr

I’ve been asked why I dislike surveymonkey surveys, I don’t want to reply fully in that forum (because it’s off-topic there) and I want to publish this for your feedback now.

surveymonkey really frustrates me. In short, it’s often confusing, I think it doesn’t follow UK accessiblity laws and I’m unsure if it complies with our privacy laws. It seems like another triumph of marketing over good sense. It’s a free market failure, possibly based on lack of information on the drawbacks of this option.

If a survey is on Surveymonkey, it’s easiest for able-bodied users of full-fat browsers with low security and privacy settings to answer. Using NoScript or a privacy tool? You’ll get an error message (which contradicts the VPAT_SurveyMonkey.pdf description). Unable to see graphics clearly? The forms will be hard to read because they’ve replaced the browser form widgets (such as checkboxes and radio buttons) with javascript-driven images for no good reason.

Those sort of faults will probably bias results a bit – how much will depend on the subject. It’s a particular case of a problem I first mentioned in the last-but-one bullet point on my debian surveys page back in 2006. Basically, I think you should keep open surveys as open as possible. Statistics literature is littered with bizarre spurious results from when the survey method accidentally favours some particular subset of the population.

Finally, surveymonkey surveys can be left with answer requirements which make no sense, such as ticking “Other” requiring a text input, but the text box not accepting input. Is that the fault of the survey owner not being able to work the admin interface, or the interface having some subtle flaws? I’m not completely sure, but I’ve had that experience a few times.

So, can I persuade people to use limeservice, doodle or even Google Docs rather than Surveymonkey, please?

I think Limeservice is better because it’s based in Germany (so EU data protection and privacy laws apply) and is cooperatively-developed FOSS software. Doodle and Google aren’t, but are quicker and easier to use for straw polls.

If you want something to install on your own site and the downloadable limesurvey software seems a bit heavy, then askpeople seems another good option. Our co-op can host either of those if you’re willing to pay. (If someone would be willing to sponsor it, we’d host some free surveys too – let me know.)

Lots of people use surveymonkey, but popularity doesn’t always mean it’s the best tool. Please consider the alternatives and pick the best tool for the job.