The USA Today article is using statistics from a Feb. 2008 survey done by CARA entitled “Sacraments Today: Belief and Practice Among U.S. Catholics”
Here’s the direct link to the survey
cara.georgetown.edu/sacraments.html
Thank you.
First of all why after almost a year and a half, did USA Today suddenly decide to bring up this survey?
Slow news day?
What was the purpose behind the article? Why did the editor run with the story?
No clue.
Second, regardless of the pedigree of CARA and regardless of how long they’ve been in operations, the survey is highly suspect.
Anytime a survey is used as proof of an opinion you’ve got to look beyond the mere numbers. Remember the old adage “Numbers don’t lie, but liars use numbers.” and bad methodology equals bad results.
The sample is of ONLY 1,007 people. There are around 68 million Catholics in the US. So this sample group represents .0000014% of total group. The is far too small of a pool to reflect an overall view of American Catholics.
I don’t know. To begin with, I have not taken statistics, nor have I taken a course in survey methodology. Have you? Do you have any specific information that their methodology is suspect, or is this simply your opinion? I am just curious; we are inundated with surveys of all sorts of things outside the Catholic church - politics being the prime mover, I would suspect. I do know that the whole process of taking surveys has been thoroughly studied for a long time. Obviously, that knowledge can be misused to skew the results of a study; but given that you have a bunch of PhD.s in charge of CARA studies, and they are published, meaning that their methodology is most likely subject to public scrutiny, I would not, for one, be willing to accuse them of anything less than an open handed, non-biased study without some information showing that their methodology is subject to contamination. Simply voicing a personal opinion without any factual evidence to back it up is not a means of validly attacking the study.
Also the people surveyed were provided by a company know as the Knowledge Network
knowledgenetworks.com/index4.html How were they picked? Did they volunteer? Were they paid? All these factors contribute to the outcome.
Understand I can make any survey say any conclusion I want as long as I control who is being surveyed.
I have no question that it is possible to skew results; it is also possible to innocently come up with a false conclusion by asking the right question, having an innocent purpose, but asking the question the wrong way. But just because a survey can be poorly done is not a valid reason to presume that all surveys are suspect.
Finally who really cares about a survey of some random American Catholics.
Is the doctrines, dogmas, and practices of the Church predicated upon popular opinion? Did Christ have a focus group before the Beatitudes?
there are any number of people who might legitimately want the results of any given survey. You and I both know the answers to your rhetorical questions, so they are irrelevant.
Because if that’s the case the Church would have women priests, married priests, and allow divorce, contraception and abortion. All positions favored by the majority of US Catholics.
The Church is not a democracy. It is a Monarchy with Christ as our King.
And those statements are red herrings. You seem to have an issue with either CARA, or anyone taking a survey, and I am not sure why. Your comments about doctrine, women priests, democracy etc. would seem to indicate that you are opposed to a survey; but that would seem to be because you do not see legitimate uses of them. But your failure to understand what legitimate uses they may have is not an indictment of surveys, but simply a showing of your lack of understanding to what legitimate purpose they may be used.
For example, the survey which is the subject of this thread could easily and legitimtely be used to combine with demographics of various parishes, in order to determine, with the limited resources a bishop would have to set up Masses in the EF in his diocese. Rather than simply responding to whomever cries the loudest, for example, he might decide that a parish with a high number of graduate degrees might be a more likely prospect (as they had the highest response in terms of education of desiring the EF). And that has absolutely nothing to do with doctrine, or women priests, or democracy. the survey would give the bishop some initial guidance in how to further research and determine where limited resources might be needed.
Or the survey you noted about beliefs and practices might very legitimately be used by a group of bishops in determining how they might approach adult education, and where they might spend limited resources in order to correct deficiencies in catechesis.
I don’t want to presume your thinking or attitudes, but it strikes me that you are overly suspicious about the process of taking a survey, its methodology, and its purposes. Presuming evil intent where there is none shown makes for a poor basis for having an intelligent conversation.
CARA says that it is non-partisan. Unless you have something specific which shows that to be false, it would seem out of nothing else than simple charity to presume they are above board, unless and until it is shown otherwise. I do not suggest a Pollyanna attitude; but I do suggest that a presumption that there is a hidden agenda is just as wrong. They say that their polls are national, that they have surveyed more than 21,000 self-identified Catholics between 2000 and 2008.
The base they use, Knowledge Networks, assembles its database from random surveys by telephone (and they note that there is subsidized Internet access and other incentives). The indications I have is that Knowledge Networks is not taking surveys themselves, but rather are providing a database for other researchers. According to CARA, sampling 1,0007 self-identified Catholics from a national database has a sampling error of +/- 3.1%. Unless you have statistical evidence that this is false, that also should answer your questions.
Given that the database is being rewarded for simply being avaiable to be surveyed, the fact that they are rewarded with something is not in itself particularly skewing, as they are not rewareded for their answers but for their availability to be questioned.
