In assuming all respondents have a religion, the framing of the question produces acquiescence bias that inflates data — by as much as 11 points, according to a number of surveys — in favour of religious affiliation.
Of all the things going on in the country, the specific wording of a census question is right up there on my list. 😃
On the one hand, changing the way the question is asked might make it more accurate as one snapshot in time. On the other, it makes comparisons between years harder, and the change could mask other religious changes currently happening in the community.
I’m also not sure if asking if they’re religious first and only asking for which if they say yes, won’t have no bias in a different way. I used to know people who would say: “The Bible is truth and not religion”, and those people would be counted as not being religious if the changes were to occur. Then again, those people are rare, and might feel compelled to answer that they are religious anyway, even if they don’t think of themselves as such.
If ever the option of Atheist / Agnostic / Non-Religious is missing, then I’ll opt to mis-classify as a Sikh, Hindu or other peaceful minority religion so that they have more of a chance to be recognised.
Who the fuck is promoting this except for Christian evangelicals? I can’t see how this would benefit active else…
Regrettably, the ABS backed down following a media campaign by the Catholic hierarchy — who wanted to keep the question as it was, to ensure comparable data with past Censuses
I do wonder what the problem is when there’s a ‘No religion’ option, though.
Per the article, without a “no religion” option people will pick the religion of their parents even if they’re now atheist. This inflates the christian numbers.
There already was a “no religion” option, in the last census it was the first checkbox under the question asking what religion you follow.
He does have a point in that the proposed question would have been a more neutral way of determining whether someone is religious, the combination of the implicit assumption in the old question that having a religion is normal and providing an single tick option for selecting common ones probably does make a small percentage say yes that would not in the proposed question. Claims of coercion and human rights abuse though seem a bit over the top and are probably coming more from a dislike of religions (and their political power) rather than a desire for accurate data.
What wasn’t mentioned in the article but is something I would consider likely that the main difference with the proposed question might not be from the question itself but from extra effort of writing out a religion name rather than ticking a box - it’s a small effort but there’d be a lot of people who just want to go through the questions as fast as possible.
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Just my opinion but I think it could be used as a mechanism to eventually remove tax exempt status for churches. “Look at the outsize influence they have in politics while only 20% identifies as Christian” or something like that.
Anti-Lock Brakes?
Australian Bureau of Statistics
