Gwendolyn's new Pagan Metaphysics and Ethics Survey - click on the link! It will be open through Summer Solstice.
Hello everyone:
I'm really hoping that I can get your help with this. Back in 2012, I did a Needs Assessment Survey and had an amazing 3,318 people respond to it! I have spent the last number of years analyzing the data and sharing it out as best I could. There are academic articles in The Pomegranate, I shared it at both academic and Pagan conferences and talked about it on Podcasts and in the Wild Hunt.
Just to be sure you all know this, I am both a Pagan Priestess and also a scholar at American University.
This time, I'm both trying to follow up on a couple of issues that came up in the results of the last survey, but I also want to explore what it is we actually believe in terms of metaphysics and theology and how that relates to our ethical reasoning and other issues, like our sense of self-efficacy, how central our spiritual path is to our identity, and things like that.
I am going to try to stay in better touch through this blog and share what I see and what I'm thinking as I'm doing it. I hope that this is interesting and helps the community as well as helping the academic discussions about Paganism.
Just to start, I will mention that this survey has a combination of some items that I created specifically for us, and then other measures that have been given by other scholars to the general population. That enables us to compare ourselves to the general population.
For the metaphysics, I had SO MUCH FUN, trying to get the major metaphysical positions reduced to a sentence each in ways that made sense (A HUGE THANK YOU to all of my beta testers on different variations, including my non-Pagan beta testers).
Thank you for all of your support. Here, again, is the survey link. Pagan Metaphysics and Ethics Survey
I have filled out the survey, but have 1 major problem. You use the terms morals and ethics seemingly interchangeably in the survey, making some of the questions very hard to answer. They are two very different things and change the meaning of the questions. Just a thought.
ReplyDeleteThanks for your time.
Thank you for this comment, Jordan. I don't disagree. In the Ethics/Morals section I used two different statistically validated instruments that were designed by other scholars and have been used in numerous other studies...which enables comparisons to the general population. One is called the Moral Foundations Questionnaire and the other is the Ethics Positions Questionnaire.
ReplyDeleteThe advantage of using validated instruments are that they have been through tremendous testing and analysis in their creation and their reliability has been determined. They also allow for comparisons with findings in other studies. Like, at the end of this, I should be able to say how we are similar or different than the general population in how we answer the questions. The disadvantages are that you can't really change their language. Sometimes you can make a very, very slight adjustment. The section about who you do or do not share your Pagan identity with is a ever so slightly modified version of the Nebraska Outness Survey in which the only change I made was to substitute "Pagan" for "sexual" identity since it was created for the LGBTQ community.
So...philosophically, I agree...but for my purposes, I thought using the instruments that allow comparisons was the "higher" good in this instance.
Lovely survey!
ReplyDeleteThere were two places where I felt like any answer I gave would be wrong one way or another. Maybe everyone feels that way with this kind of instrument, but I wanted to comment in case it's useful.
One question was 'are you clergy?' So in the Wiccan tradition which is my primary religious organization, I'm not clergy (though I'm working on it). But in my job as a chaplain, I do pastoral counseling, I lead and facilitate prayer, I offer blessings and anointings, I conduct funerals and memorial services ... sure looks like I work as a clergyone even though I don't have the equivalent of an 'ordination'.
Similarly, the question about work relationships. My coworkers pretty much all know I'm Pagan (though some of them have probably forgotten because it's not important in most of our conversations). My bosses certainly do.
But my 'clients and customers' -- the people I serve as chaplain -- most often do not. And so the question about 'do you avoid saying things' that would indicate my religion had to be a much more 'yes' answer. As my job is to meet the client where they are and support the religion of their choice (or none), it's usually not useful to self-identify. Unless of course they ask, but a surprisingly huge majority never do.
Can't wait to see what you do with the data collected here.
--Maggie