Church attendance report pulled over 'fraudulent' responses
The original report for claimed a rise in young people attending church in England and Wales.
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Church attendance report pulled over 'fraudulent' responses 29 minutes ago Share Save Catherine Wyatt BBC religious affairs Share Save A report claiming the number of young people attending church in England and Wales had skyrocketed has been retracted, after the underlying data was found to be flawed. The Bible Society's "Quiet Revival" report had been widely reported on since its publication last year and became an accepted part of discourse among many Christians. Now YouGov, which carried out the research, has told the Bible Society that an internal review of the data found that some of the respondents who completed its survey were "fraudulent". It has said that quality control measures, which usually remove such responses, were not applied due to human error. The original report claimed to show that 4% of 18-24 year olds surveyed in 2018 told YouGov they were Christian and went to church at least once a month, rising to 16% by 2024. The so called "Quiet Revival" in young people going to church was mentioned in Parliament, lead to in-depth press coverage, and churches around the country presented their own evidence of young people "turning to Jesus". Last year, 600 people attended a church conference in Woking called "turning up the volume on the Quiet Revival", hearing the phenomenon likened to "a great wave sent by God". But academics questioned the findings, pointing out that the results seemed out of step with other data. Results from the long-running British Social Attitudes Survey, and even the Church of England's own figures, show a long term decline in church attendance. Experts said that YouGov's methodology - gathering data from volunteers who received cash rewards for their time - left it vulnerable to "bogus respondents" skewing the data. YouGov now says that tools meant to eliminate data from such respondents – who may have participated and given random answers just to claim the rewards – "were not administered in the optimal way". It says the review...
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