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Conservapedia talk:Are atheists productive (view source)
Revision as of 21:09, February 26, 2008
, 21:09, February 26, 2008A research proposal
:It tells me that second generation mushrooms are far far more productive that second generation Christians. --[[User:GDewey|GDewey]] 16:03, 26 February 2008 (EST)
:It tells me that second generation mushrooms are far far more productive that second generation Christians. --[[User:GDewey|GDewey]] 16:03, 26 February 2008 (EST)
== A research proposal ==
'''Hypothesis''': "second-generation atheists" are less productive than atheists raised in religious environments.<br />
'''Experimental group''': atheists raised by atheist parents.<br />
'''Control group''': atheists raised by religious parents (it must be atheists raised by religious parents, and must not include theists raised by religious parents, which would introduce a confounding bias).<br />
'''Outcome measure''': various possibilities. Publications in scholarly journals (maybe citation score from the ISI databases)? Board membership of leading corporations? Political office?<br />
'''Study design''': it has to be a '''retrospective''' study, unless we are prepared to wait for people currently being raised by the two types of parents to reach adulthood. Maybe a '''case-control study''', with "achievers" as cases and "non-achievers" as controls (maybe take graduates from university X in year Y, and classify them on the basis of what they have achieved since, then go and investigate their backgrounds?). Or a simple '''cross-sectional study''' of atheist achievers, setting out to investigate their backgrounds, and measuring the ratio of second-generation to first-generation atheists.<br />
But then, regardless of the details of the study design, we hit a problem. How do we define ''atheist'' and ''religious''? Do we base it only on what people say about themselves publicly, which would presumably bias the sample towards those with strong views of whatever sort? Do we make a judgment on each person in the sample? Do we rely on what others say about them? How do we deal with those (and it may be the overwhelming majority) whose religious stance we don't know? Do we have to interview them all? And if it's difficult to establish someone's religious stance with any certainty, it is going to be even harder to find out anything meaningful about the upbringing or the parents. Further thought required ... [[User:Humblpi|Humblpi]] 16:09, 26 February 2008 (EST)