I guess we will just call last summer's data gathering a pre-test. I found not one, but TWO mistakes.
Students from this past year's research methods class will recall that I adhered to the wording on the FAITH scale, in order to make it more comparable with the original authors, even though it was assuming a monotheist perspective. This was okay except for one item which asked respondents if they used religious media (e.g. television, radio, magazines). Or something like that. Given that it is 2017 (2016 when I first distributed it), this is even less relevant for Neo-Pagans. There are no Neo-Pagan religion channels (like there are Christian networks); the major pagan magazines are mostly out of print.
What I should have done was included or substituted blogs, podcasts, and websites. Not only does this reflect the changing technology, but also something more germane to Neo-Pagan lifestyles. When I was present, if people asked what I meant, I made those kinds of suggestions, but that may bias the results.
So, in later printings, I will change that. And obviously indicate which responses were in version 1 and version 2 of the survey. It may be that there won't be a significant difference. But you don't know unless you find out.
The second mistake was in the Intrinsic/Extrinsic Religiosity scale. Basically extrinsic religiosity is participating in the religion because of what you can get from it, using religion as a 'tool.' Intrinsic religiosity is about integrating religion into your entire personality and being; it is an end in and of itself, rather than a means to an end.
Anyway, there's a whole line of research in development of a scale to measure this, or more correctly two sub-scales. The problem though, is that for some reason I can't even fathom, I only asked 12 of the 20 questions....I can't recall at all why I would have left off at least 7 of them (one makes sense, since it asks about weekly attendance, which isn't germane for most Neo-Pagan religions).
Duh.
So, in my first article I'll attempt to publish, I won't probably be focusing on that. I'll fix it for Version 2 as well, but the Version 1 surveys just won't count in any research on that topic.
Oh well.....
