Davie 5 ,6

If you wanted to study the transformation that Davie describes as the shift from obligation to consumption in modern religiosity, what kind of data would you need to collect? Explain your choice.

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From my perspective, using public opinion surveys would be an effective method to study the shift from obligation to consumption in modern religiosity. The public opinion surveys would show the change from obligation to consumption over time. I believe ethnoghraphies would be an inefficient method because the researcher is not interested in in-depth research about a specific religion. The researcher wants to pinpoint a shift that occurs over time.

I agree with you in conducting a survey. Surveys allows a brief and easy way of gathering demographic information. As well as reaching a large and broad sample. Surveys also allows the respondent to answer questions anonymously hopefully giving honest reactions. It can understand the diversity of members characteristics in a population.

I agree. A random sample, public opinion, online survey that is available worldwide and geared towards those who consides themselves religious would be a very effect method to show the change from obligation to consumption. With the survery available worldwide the researcher can collect more data that is representive of a world view. The research will probably conclude, the shift is not only happening in the Christian religion and denominations but the various other world religions as well.

I agree and think that going directly to the source of the people involved in the religion and the change is the most true information and the most reliable. instead of asking a bystander or an expert, going to the people who are practicing and noticing the shift is the most effective way to attain information.

I agree with you on the importance of surveys as an efficient way to collect data when it comes to public concern.We can see trends in surveys in order to examine obligation to consumption over time.However ,I disagree since I do think ethnographical can help a researcher to go in depth.I don't see how that wouldn't help a study.

I agree with Victoria because public surveys would be an excellent idea. You could survey people who go to their place of worship, followed by just random people on the street and ask what their preference is. People can be anywhere from not following at all to moderatly or loosely following, to strictly speaking to God everyday and going to their place of worship more often. My personal view is a church is just a building, meaning, when you pray to God that IS church, or a group gathering praying together is church, whether its in your home or not. Some people make a big deal about attending services but do not act in the way God would like them to on the other six days of the week.

I agree with you on the fact that "People can be anywhere from not following at all, to moderately or loosely following, to strictly speaking to God everyday and going to their place of worship more often." As a Christian, I am in that group with those who speak to God everyday and go to my church often. I also agree with the last sentence, because there are many people like that in our world today. For me, the church is a place for reflection. When I pray to God daily, I feel grateful for all that he has done for me.

I am a very devoted Christian to God who grew up in a Catholic middle school that I absolutely hated. However, what turned me off about Catholic Church was all of the rules, such as priests not being able to marry, penance, repititional prayers, and the idolatry. This goes against exactly what the scripture says. Worshopping statues was a huge question mark to me. Priests would assign ten Hail Mary prayers and people would just babble on as if praying was something to get over with. Your relationship with Jesus should not be robotic, which frustrated me.

I agree with multiple points you said, 1. Public surveys is a great method to use to see the change overtime on obligation to consumption of religiosity. Public surveys can help you determine how people follow their religion. Do they strictly speak to god everyday, at home or at church or both. Do they speak to god only at big point or lowest points, is it once a week on sundays basis, or holidays. What type of religion person are they.

An ethnography is the scientific description of the customs of individual peoples and cultures. In modern religiosity, ethnographies, as well as case studies, add details to the view of religion through a sociological lens. When Davie discuses the shift from obligation to consumption in Chapter 6, she is not doing an in-depth analysis. Public opinion surveys (POS) address the demographics of religiosity. POS point out trends in society over time through statistics. Because POS are generally so broad, they only reach the surface of sociological analysis. Thus, I think that the obligation-consumption shift in modern religiosity is best analyzed using POS.

I agree, but only if the goal of our research is solely to identify if a transformation from obligation to consumption in modern religiosity has occurred. Public opinion surveys would be the most relevant and appropriate method because we would only need the demographic information, which could help us see trends in particular cultures or neighborhoods depending on the scale of our surveys. However, I do think that it would be possible for me to miss some valuable information or trend(s) if I'm only utilizing public opinion surveys. Depending on exactly what the research question is, ethnographic methods could be coded to help us identify a trend we might have missed if we only relied on surveys, especially if you're trying to understand a societal transformation. We can't do much more with the demographic information provided to us via the surveys if we don't utilize some ethnographic methods.

I strongly agree because constructing public opinion survey's for people on their way to place of worship, as well as people in general can be used too measures the public view's or opinions. I believe that ethnography can work as an efficient resource because that greater accuracy in the analyses of values, beliefs and ideals and thus increasing the understanding of other peoples' religious life. Public opinion surveys are accurate as they can be geared toward constructing a sociological analysis of modern religiousity. Therefore, it would be useful to conduct measure the opinion of a group by studying a random sample of that group through utilizing surveys, in-depth interviews and other qualitative methods necessary.

Using a public survey is definitely the way to go. It would be the effective way to check the shift form obligation to consumption in religion. It would be efficient because public (global) surveys are easily spread across the globe and can collect all different data from real people in real time. The survey can be in depth or surface level, surveys are very versatile and can be stenciled out to fit exactly what the question asks. So in this case the survey could be very basic and researchers can use them for statistical analysis for the shift from obligation or consumption.

You can do random selection, for surveys from different communities who practices different religions. This will give you a broader spectrum of the change from obligation to consumption in a variety of groups of people with different religions. I think observing is good as well, because some might say something but act differently. Church is just a building, you do not have to go to church to be religious. So a mix of in person interview, observation and survey will be best. To get a more general real answer from your research.

Yes, I agree with using your own observation, because some people are great at masking their true selves in order to fit in. Observation is key because it allows us to actually identify what is happening in front of us rather than having a sideline view of things or having to gather sources, we can be the judge of what we observed and interpret our observation into our own idea and see how we feel.

In my opinion, to truly trace the change of the religious behaviors of individuals in society, it'd require both the usage of public surveys and census reports as a measure of how people identify themselves from a religious standpoint. This data would have to be paired with ethnographies and case studies that seek to dive deeper into actual parish membership and the worldview of the modern citizen from a religious standpoint. This in depth study would help you put the numbers into proper context and allow you to draw more informed conclusions.

I completely agree, (because even thinking about all of the other comments on this forum), it will depend on what is the exact question, as a researcher, that you want to answer. The forum question, I believe, is too broad because there are many ways to go about getting adequate information. But the best way to get so much information that almost any question/perspective can be answered is by doing a wide range of methods like public surveys/POS, census reports, ethnographies, case studies, probably even some interviews with other sociologists of religion or historians. This way you can gather quantitative information and back it up with qualitative findings. And all of that combined can provide very well rounded research findings that can explain the transformation of religious obligation to religious consumption, as well as illustrate it all.

A shift from obligation to consumption within religiosity, can be considered a turning point to many. I believe that if we wanted to understand this shift, using qualitative methods would be the best means to understand what was happening within a given society. Perhaps I wouldn't necessarily use ethnography, but I would conduct interviews to the individuals who participate in "consuming" some religions. I believe that using a random sample could lead me to find a few participants that can relate to the study of obligation and consumption. Some of these participants can then lead me to some of the people they know that can also relate to the phenomenon of my study(snowball sampling). Some of my interview questions would ask, why it is the person may have stepped away from their ascribed religion, to the religion of their choice now. Another interview question would ask, how having many choices of religions have lead them to be spiritually or religiously happy.

Honestly the best way to study and observe the changes from shift obligation to consumption would be to conduct an open/public survey. Conducting survey allows us to gain random insight of peoples opinions and how they feel about a particular setting/event and how they believe it should be handled or approached. I also believe random sampling would benefit greatly because, if you randomly select people from other groups rather than constantly picking from the same in-group your reviews/results will be predominantly bias. and in order to avoid biases its better to select amongst individuals in other groups.

I believe public surveys can aid in examining a trend overtime.You are able to look at different periods and the people living during the times views on change that is occurring. It is important when surveying to make sure their are no biases in the surgery in order to have more accuracy in your results.We can better understand different religious beliefs ,culture,and attitudes through surveys.Another great method is interviewing many people in different culutures and different periods of times.However this many be time consuming.

I agree with you, public surveys allow you to see the public's opinion on whats going on around them and allows them to think and answer something in a survey they may have not even thought about or been aware about. I do also believe it is important to make sure there are no biases in the survey but there would really be no real way of doing that. I think a great method would also be interviews but believe it would be more effective to interview people in places unrelated to the interview question. For example, if I was to interview people and how they feel about guns laws I wouldn't interview people in Florida first since they've just recently experienced a mass shooting. I'd interview people in a state where there hasn't been any mass shootings in a while get there responses then get responses from people in Florida.