Coming To My Census Concerning Religion

[travisjhall]

There's been a lot of people jumping up and down about how people should respond to the "what religion are you" question on the census. My own view is that you should just put down whatever it is that you happen to be. I can't think of any agenda that could be served by doing otherwise.

But does that mean I should be marking "No Religion", like some

Comments

[paradigmshifty]

Thank you - that was really useful.

[travisjhall]

I've done a bit of an edit, so it may be even more useful now.

[capnoblivious]

Yeah, ditto.

[fireflyfaery]

From last I remember, 'Christian' isn't a religion, but 'Protestant', 'Catholic', etc. etc. are.

So I had to fill in the 'other' section. Yeah. I don't like your catagorising, ABS.

[merinnan]

Actually, the Census/ABS does categorise 'Christian' as a religion. It's code 2000, Christian nfd (nfd stands for not further defined).

[travisjhall]

I don't have the form to hand right now to check, but it is possible that the census form gives as options the largest narrow or religious groups within the Christian broad group rather than the broad group itself. In that case, you would fill in the "other" section just like the members of thousands of other religions that don't happen to number amongst the largest half-dozen amongst the Australian population, and they fill in the correct code based on what you write.

As merinnan said, you'd be classified as "Christian, nfd" with a code of 2000.

This is not at all an indication that the ABS does not consider "Christian" to be a religion. It is just an indication that they cannot include several thousand specific answers on the form, and you don't happen to fall into the very biggest groups.

[fireflyfaery]

It's more the novelty that you'd think it would be common ...

[derigueur]

There should be a section marked "Did you actually do any thinking or preparation at all in anticipation of this census in order to complete it more accurately" which sends your details to the ABS HR department for immediate recruitment.

[travisjhall]

Yeah, well, I did do a stats degree. That means both that I am more inclined to do this sort of research, and that I could possibly be useful to them if recruited. :)

[aphephobia]

+1

The Form

[ext_183534]

The paper form has Catholic, Anglican (Church of England), Uniting Church, Presbyterian, Buddhism, Greek Orthodox, Islam, Baptist, Lutheran, Other - please specify and No Religion.

I find this interesting in light of their spiel about what are their broad groups (despite Judaism being broad group 5, it's not on that list).

My father always said that we should put "Christian" as our religion because anything like "Anglican" or "Catholic" is a denomination. Now having read some of their categories, I might be "Other Protestant" since I'm happy in most Christian churches; unfortunately I can't open their xls file to check.

Re: The Form

[aphephobia]

My father always said that we should put "Christian" as our religion because anything like "Anglican" or "Catholic" is a denomination.

That was my suspicion on how it worked, too. (I thought people would go "Christian: Catholic" etc since there are a gazillion different branches of Christianity.

I find this interesting in light of their spiel about what are their broad groups (despite Judaism being broad group 5, it's not on that list).

I noticed that too. And was very "Huh?" about it.

[travisjhall]

The predefined options on the list don't correspond to broad groups. They all correspond to religious groups, with only one - "Anglican (Church of England)" - having to be read through the index to find its religious group ("Anglican Church of Australia"). The ones that are broad groups are also narrow groups and religious groups. For example, the "Buddhism" broad group containing the "Buddhism" narrow group containing the "Buddhism" religious group. So Judaism goes into the "other" category because there are significantly less Jews in Australia than Lutherans.

Your father has his definition of "religion" but other people have theirs, and the researchers have to pick one and stick with it in order to produce meaningful information. Refusing to give more info because he doesn't like the way they use words won't do anybody, including himself, any good.

I found that when using Firefox, I had to save the Excel file to my hard drive and then open it. It failed if opened directly. Even opening it from the Firefox download window worked, once

Re: The Form

[leadgend]

I assume the list is merely 9 categories from last census with the highest responses plus Other and No Religion (which would count as one of the top 10 anyway).

[bunnitos]

I think No Religion pretty much works for me too.