Open Letter to the Barna Group

I am rendering this an open letter since I seem incapable of soliciting a response from Barna Group, who were responsible for the publication of a study:

http://www.barna.org/FlexPage.aspx?Page=BarnaUpdate&BarnaUpdateID=272

The purpose of the study is to draw comparisons between Christians and atheists on a slate of behaviors and attitudes related to community interactions and relations. The reason I felt compelled to write to the group expressing my concerns over their presentation of the research they had conducted is I noticed it had been cited in op-ed pieces published by individuals arguing that believers are more likely to positively interact with their communities than non-believers. However, as I point out in the letter, the findings are misleading since there is an absence of any indication that standard tools of statistical analysis were used in order to determine, if indeed, the relationships pointed to between faith and one’s conduct in community affairs are reflective a relationship between these two variables, (faith or lack of in relation with community engagement).

Dear Editor,

I am a bit confused about your disclaimer [copyright notifications]. However, I intend to use your findings under the provision of Fair Use, which you cannot simultaneously publish while prohibiting against. I do not mean to be combative. However, a Creative Commons can often command more respect from a savvy audience.I have some questions concerning your methodology when assessing the differences between non-believers and believers.

You refer to differences between believers and non-believers with respect to propensities to give to not-for-profit entities, citing the increased likelihood of believers giving to such foundations in juxtaposition to the decreased likelihood of non-believers giving to such foundations. However, you also cite a tendency for non-believers to be younger in age than believers. Do you control for age when comparing the likelihood of non-believers giving to charities in comparison to believers giving in to charities? I am left to suspect that you do not, since there is no indication that you even conducted any type of regression analysis upon the data you collected.

Further, since age is positively correlated to wealth, do you control for wealth when you compare the tendencies to give to charities instantiated respectively between believers and non-believers?

I think the potential problems with your findings are transparent from the two questions stated above. However, before rushing to any judgments, I certainly wanted to give you an opportunity to correct any of my potentially mistaken impressions.

On a final note, releasing these statistics without analyzing them according to appropriate measures can have the effect of providing rhetorical ammunition to partisans with respect to issues concerning religion, who certainly do not take it upon themselves to delve deeper into the veracity of the sources from whom they cite. Perhaps, this is your intention. However, once again, I wanted to give you the opportunity to correct any incorrect impressions I might have of the research you organization is conducting.

Regards,

Russell Cole

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