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 | Many of our readers are students. The percentage of students probably varies greatly from month to month during the year -- reaching a peak during the academic season, and a minimum during summer vacation. |
| Our readers live in over 75 countries around the world, not just in the U.S. and Canada. |
| Internet users tend to have above-average technical knowledge and are atypical in other ways. |
| The age distribution of our readers probably does not match that of the U.S. population. |
| We don't know why about 2,000 of our readers answered each poll, while a much larger number did not. |
| Some of our readers may have voted more than one time. |
First poll: Religious affiliation
From 1999-NOV-4 to 13, we asked what our readers' religious affiliation was. We received 1,865 responses, giving a margin of error of 2.3%. Unfortunately, the poll at the time only allowed 5 options. Thus, we received a lot of "other" responses.
| Faith group | Poll % response | In U.S. population | Over-representation |
| Christianity | 49% | 85% | 0.58 times |
| Agnostic, Atheist, Humanist, etc. | 21% | 7%? | 3 times |
| Other | 15% | 7%? | 2.1 times |
| Wicca and other Neopagan | 13% | .1% | 130 times |
| Judaism | 2% | 1% | 2.0 times |
Obviously, the individuals who answered our poll are atypical of the U.S. or North America. We are at a complete loss to understand the Wiccan/Neopagan response. Neopagans that probably constitute about 0.1% of the North American population generated 13% of the response. This is an over-representation of about 130 times! We have seen this sort of relationship before.
Conclusions:
| Our heavy concentration on Christian topics is probably worthwhile, since about half of our readers are Christian |
| We should lay greater emphasis on topics of interest to non-theists and Neopagans. |
| We should repeat the survey with more options, including Islam, New Age, Eastern and Caribbean religions. |
Second poll: When does human personhood begin?
From 1999-NOV-14 to DEC-20, we asked our readers' when they believed that life became human life. A consensus exists among pro-life and pro-choice factions that when life becomes a human person that the pregnancy process should not be halted, unless it is for some very unusual reasons. Unfortunately, there is little agreement about when that transition occurs. We received 1,951 responses, giving a margin of error of 2.2%.
| At what point at or after conception does human personhood begin? |
% Response |
| At conception | 51% |
| At implantation in the womb | 3% |
| When the fetal heart starts beating | 8% |
| By the end of the 1st trimester | 3% |
| By the end of the 2nd trimester | 1% |
| When the fetus is viable - can live on its own | 10% |
| When the fetal brain matures | 8% |
| At birth | 17% |
Some thoughts:
| One of the participants suggested that our second option may not be clear to the public. After conception, the fertilized ovum descends to the womb and implants itself in the wall of the uterus. This is the point at which pregnancy begins, according to physicians. | ||||
| Another participant wondered if there was an organized effort by outside groups to manipulate the answers. We are inclined to think not. We have seen many polls that initially showed one pattern of response, and then shifted to a different pattern after word was spread about the poll. That did not happen here; the "at conception" and "at birth" percentages remained essentially constant throughout the life of the poll. | ||||
| We were surprised at the large percentage of respondents who judged the heart beat as the start of personhood. | ||||
| We received quite a few comments that were unrelated to the question
asked, such as:
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We were amazed at the large number of our readers who believe that human personhood starts at the instant of conception. We assumed that most of our readers would put the time of translation well into pregnancy. We were also surprised by a few people who left comments about life starting after birth.
Third poll: Visitor demographics:
From 1999-DEC-20 to 2000-FEB-17, we asked our visitors about themselves. We received about 1155 responses. The margin of error is 2.9%:
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| Location:
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| Gender:
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| Age:
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| Personal religion:
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Quite a few individuals who filled out our poll complained that there were not enough options in the personal religion question. We were limited to eight options by the Freepolls.com software.
We were somewhat surprised at the large number of student visitors to our site. We had observed a wide fluctuation in the number of hits per month during each year. The variation is synchronized to the academic year. But we did not realize that students formed the single largest group among our visitors.
The geographic distribution of our visitors was close to what we expected. The overwhelming number of Emails that we receive come either from the U.S. or Canada, so we assumed that site visitors did as well. Neopagans are enormously over-represented. Most sources estimate that 1% or less of the American population are followers of Wicca or other Neopagan traditions. But 19% of the visitors who answered our poll identified themselves as Neopagans. This did not surprise us. We have seen similar results on other polls. The over-representation remains a mystery.
References:
- Freepolls.com is provided by VantageNet, Inc. Their web site is at: http://ads.freepolls.com/
- "The margin of error calculator," at: http://www.mrmprojects.com/margin.htm
- "So how come a survey of 1,600 people can tell me what 250 million are thinking," RobertNiles.com at: http://nilesonline.com/stats/sample.shtml
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Copyright ©1999 to 2005 by Ontario Consultants on
Religious Tolerance
Originally written: 1999-NOV-13
Latest update: 2005-APR-18
Author: B.A. Robinson
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