Tidbits

Yesterday my wife & youngest son made a whole mess of Christmas cookies which leads me to my annual lament about baking cookie dough--why?! Cookie dough tastes better than baked cookies, so why bake? It's like the Tibetan Buddhist monks who make a beautiful sand sculpture then dump it into the lake to make a larger spiritual point, except there is no larger point here.

Also, why do I get hit with spatulas when I try to eat cookie dough, but they have it offered to me ten minutes after it's baked, when I don't like it as much? It's not right!

I came across a funny site for office slang.

From a student evaluation of a professor here at UConn (not me): "on a scale of one to awesome, this guy is totally sweet." This scale is absurd but somehow it makes sense.

My brother, John (who posts as Knumb Knuts), looks remarkably good as a hot blond

Terror in the mailbox

My wife and I have received a truly terrifying letter. The first sentence:

"The purposes of this letter are to invite you to our annual Open House and Orientation for Parents and to provide you information about the course selection process in the weeks ahead with activities planned for your sons/daughters that will help ease their transition to E.O. Smith High School. "

What bothered us so much? It isn’t the rampant use of passive voice and prepositions by my son’s future educators (though, this was disturbing). Instead…

My son is going to high school next year!

This is so wrong. He’s still my little boy who I chase around the house to tickle, who likes to climb trees, who I tuck in at night, who kisses me good-bye when either of us leaves the house. Just yesterday, it seems, he slept in my arms while I studied for graduate school area exams, took all his stuffed animals to sleep overs, and ran from room to room just for fun.

When I think about the pain, confusion, and many, many difficulties that I experienced and witnessed in high school, I would give anything to spare my son from them.

But I also remember the fun, memories, friends and growth, and I want all of those and more for him.

I feel like someone in a roller coaster car that has climbed to the top of the first peak and has paused, ready to plummet: I am very scared.

An evaluation of Barna's divorce statistics II

(Post ten of a series on Christian divorce rates)

In the previous post, I put forth that Barna's well-publicized finding of "no-difference" for Christian divorce rates results from his using a narrow definition of Christianity. Here I replicate his type of analysis with another data set, to show the impact of this definition.

As I understand it, Barna does not give others access to his data, so I analyze data from the Midlife in the United States Study (MIDUS), from which I have previously posted data.

This study contains the following question: "Have you been "born again," that is, had a turning point in your life when you committed yourself to Jesus Christ?" While not identical to Barna's criteria, it's reasonably close. It was asked of Christian respondents, and 45% of them responded "yes".

We find the following divorce rates by religious group:
1) Christians reporting a born-again experience: 36%
2) Christians not reporting a born-again experience: 34%
3) Members of other religions: 37%
4) Individuals with no religious beliefs: 52%

If we compare Group 1 versus Groups 2, 3, and 4, we would find that "born again" Christians have divorce rates of 36% and all others have 38%, and we would conclude, like Barna, that born-again Christians have similar divorce rates as others.

If, however, we compare Groups 1 & 2 to Groups 3 & 4, we would find that Christians have divorce rates of 35% and non-Christians have divorce rates of 45%--a very different finding that Barna.

This analysis supports the contention that Barna's null-findings result from his use of a "born-again" measure of Christianity, one that excludes a large group of people who define themselves as Christian. This raises the question of what type of Christians define themselves using Evangelical, "born-again" language, and I will address this in the next post.

Next: An evaluation of Barna's divorce statistics III

An evaluation of Barna's divorce statistics I

(Post nine of a series on Christian divorce rates)

Do Christians have lower divorce rates than non-Christians? The answer to this question depends on who is defined to be Christian.

There are four relevant religious categories here:
1) Self-identified Christians who describe their faith in terms of “personal commitment” “accept as savior” and other evangelical, born-again language.
2) Self-identified Christians who do not describe their faith with these terms.
3) Members of other, non-Christian religions.
4) People of no religious beliefs.

George Barna compares group 1 (whom he terms “born-again” Christians) versus groups 2, 3, and 4 (whom he terms “non-born again Christian” and “non-Christian”), and he finds no difference.

In a 2004 study, Barna used these two criteria to define respondents as “born again" Christians:

“people who said they have made “a personal commitment to Jesus Christ that is still important in their life today” and who also indicated they believe that when they die they will go to Heaven because they had confessed their sins and had accepted Jesus Christ as their savior.”

Approximately 41% (1,468 of 3,615) of his sample fit the “born-again” criteria, and they had divorce rates of 35%. The remaining 59% had divorce rates of 35% leading part to summarize: “Christians Have Same Incidence of Divorce.”

In contrast, my analyses compared groups 1 and 2 versus groups 3 and 4, and I found a consistent difference (though it’s due almost entirely to the high divorce rates of group 4).

This offers a simple explanation of Barna's findings: He is comparing Christians against Christians.

Here’s what I mean. Members of group 2 presumably include many Catholics and mainline Protestants who, though devoted followers of Christ, do not describe themselves with the Evangelical language of Barna’s criteria.

Data from the General Social Survey (2000-2004) indicate that about 70% of Americans affiliate with a Christian denomination. This suggests that about half of Barna’s comparison group (i.e., (70%-41%)/59) think of themselves as Christian. Barna lumps them with people of other religions and people of no religion. These group 2 members, especially Catholics, have low rates of divorce, so putting them in the “non-Christian” comparison group substantially changes the comparison.

Next: An evaluation of Barna's divorce statistics II

It's all about the love

Tonight was the last lecture of the semester, and toward the end of class I saw a couple kissing in the back corner of the lecture hall (80 students, 200 seats). He was one of my students, she was not, so that can mean only one thing... my lectures are so good that people bring dates! I feel so affirmed.

After calling attention to them, and thanking them for the affirmation, their reaction varied considerably. The guy looked happy and was looking around. The women buried herself in a book and didn't look up again till the end of class.

Teaching can be pretty funny sometimes.

Rule of thirds

I have a theory about lists of options given in everyday life. When someone gives such list, which for whatever reason usually contains three elements, their preference is usually for the third option, even if they profess indifference.

For example. "Oh, I don't know honey, we could clean the house, sit and share our feelings, or go out for ice cream."

This strategy is effective because it takes advantage of the recency effect, plus giving other options up front makes the list-giver seem extra reasonable.

What do you think?

Qualification of findings

(Post eight of a series on Christian divorce rates)

Okay, if the data show that active Christians have very low rates of divorce, then Christianity lowers divorce rates, right?

Maybe, but maybe not. We can not tell from the data that I've presented.

The association between active Christianity and low divorce rates may be due to one or more of the following:

1) Causation. Maybe being Christian lowers the likelihood of getting a divorce.

2) Reverse causation. Maybe getting divorce lowers the likelihood of becoming a Christian. Perhaps divorcees avoid the church for fear of being stigmatized.

3) Reverse causation. Maybe Christians who get divorced leave the church or attend less frequently. Perhaps they feel less comfortable or feel marginalized. Perhaps they feel pressured out.

4) Spurious causation. Maybe some factor, we'll cleverly call it "X" leads to both religious behavior and longer-term marriages. Perhaps there is a genetic predisposition to conventional behavior?

5) Methodological artifact. Maybe Christians are less forthcoming on surveys in regards to events that violate their beliefs, such as divorce. If so, this association is really a methodological artifact. (Thanks Ashley!)

All of these interpretations are possible, and it would take sophisticated analysis of either experimental or time-ordered data to sort them out.

Tomorrow: An evaluation of Barna's divorce statistics I

Summary of findings

(Post seven of a series on Christian divorce rates)

In the past several posts, I have presented data from various surveys regarding divorce rates among Christians compared to others. Here I would like to summarize these findings plus offer some qualifications about how much they tell us.

1) Active Christians vs. non-active Christians. In each of the studies, those Christians, whether Protestant or Catholic, who attended church about once a week or more had substantially lower divorce rates than those Christians who did attended church less frequently.

2) Christians vs. members of other faiths. It's not clear that there are meaningful differences in divorce rates between Christians and members of other religions. Of all the issues analyzed here, this is the most ambiguous because of the inconsistent nature of the "other religion" data. The composition of "other religions" varied a lot across sample, and a clearer statement on this comparison would need to examine other religions individually.

3) Christians vs. people of no faith. Christians as a group, but especially those who were active, had substantially lower divorce rates than individuals professing no religious belief (e.g., atheism, agnosticism). Sometimes as much as half the rate.

4) Black versus white Christians. Black Protestants, or, in the case of the GSS data, individuals attending predominately black denominations, have much higher divorce rates than white Protestants or members of other religions. It's unclear if this is a simple race effect (i.e., blacks vs. whites regardless of religion) or a race by religion effect (the effect of religion varies by race).

5) Protestants versus Catholics. In some data sets active Catholics had somewhat lower divorce rates than protestants, in other data sets they had comparable rates. No consistent difference emerged across data sets.

6) Frequency of attendance. Divorce rates for Christians drop considerably when going from period attendance to weekly attendance. I.e., the functional form does not appear to be linear, rather it's a threshold effect at about one week.

Thoughts?

Next: Qualification of findings

Divorce rates among Christians by church attendance

(Post six of a series on Christian divorce rates)

The data presented previously showed an attendance effect, such that Christians who attended church most frequently also demonstrated the lowest levels of divorce.

Today's data look at the functional form of the relationship between church attendance and divorce rates. Again using data from the General Social Survey, I calculated what percentage of Christian respondents were divorced by how frequently they attended church. The results:

49% Never attend church
46% Less than once a year
46% About once or twice a year
42% Several times a year
42% About once a month
41% Two or three times a month
31% Nearly every week
27% Every week
28% Several times a week

You'll notice that the relationship isn't linear. It's easily seen in the graphical plot of these data at the top of this post. So, divorce ratess among Christian church-goers drops dramatically among those who go weekly.

Technical notes:
Data from the General Social Survey, 1985-2004, Christian respondents only (including evangelical, mainline Protestants, and Catholics). N = 18,392.

Tomorrow: Summary of findings

Photo caption contest ends Thursday

This Thursday marks the last day of classes for me this semester, and I will celebrate by picking a winner for the photo caption contest.

The prize? A quart of maple syrup.

If you haven't entered yet, you can do so here.

Some of my favorite slang expressions

Good slang conveys a concept better than "regular" language, has interesting origins, and is fun to say. Here are some of my current favorite slang expressions.

"Goat rope"
* Source. I heard this a couple of weeks ago from my brother John who picked it up in the navy. It comes from the term "goat rodeo," and it refers to a completely messy or disorganized situation.
* Real life example. The last time I did Sunday School it was a real goat rope. I haven't been asked to do it again.

"Jumping the shark"
* This phrase comes from television, and it refers to the moment when know that something has irreversibly dropped in quality. It comes from the old TV show "Happy Days" when a viewer gave up hope for the show upon watching Fonzie, while waterskiing, jump over a shark. The video clip.
* I'm not sure why, but I usually feel that my large lecture classes have jumped the shark by about week 12 or 13 of the 15 week semester.

"Epic shellacking"
* This is an original by my friend and colleague David Weakliem. We spent much of fall 2005 seeing if we could outwit the betting spread in college football, and in discussing one of the many games that we predicted wrong, David referred to it as an "epic shellacking." It refers to a defeat of historic proportions, but the word shellacking has a humorous connotation.
* My friend Mike suffered an epic shellacking in poker last night.

"Sweet mother of pearl"
* A sixth-grader in our neighborhood used this as one would use "holy cow" or "oh my gosh". It sounds so archaic that coming from a 12-year-old I haven't forgotten it.
* When I saw all the Christmas shopping traffic downtown today, I loudly exclaimed "sweet mother of pearl, that's a lot of cars." For a hilarious example.

"Piker"
* This refers to someone who is afraid to take risks, like the oldtime soldiers who held long pikes, thus keeping the enemy at a distance. I think that I heard this from Chris Uggen.
* When none of my students will answer a discussion question, I chastise them, saying "don't be a bunch of pikers."

"Bringing a knife to a gun fight."
* Being completely ill-equipped for a situation, being completely overmatched. (I think it's from the movie "The Untouchables")
* My arguing social statistics with David Weakliem (or discussing math with Andre) is like bringing a knife to a gun fight.

"Pregaming"
* I've heard this from my students, and they use it to refer to drinking at home before going out to drink. More generally, I would define it as anticipating an activity of excess by committing that very excess.
* E.g., when my wife asked me why I was snacking so much before Thanksgiving dinner, I told her I was just pregaming.

I always appreciate new slang, especially that which is both quirky and informative.

Suggestions?

In praise of... student athletes

In a recent sport section, the Hartford paper wrote of a UConn women's basketball player who was "jittery" in her last game and was hoping to overcome being "tentative." Here's the catch: that player, Tina Charles, is a seventeen-year-old freshman, and the last game was her first collegiate game.

How would you like to be have thousands of people publicly evaluating you as a seventeen-year-old? I couldn't handle it as a forty-four year old.

I appreciate student athletes because they work so hard. I realize that other students have part-time and full-time jobs, but few would be as demanding as being on a Division-1 team, at least in season. Their schedule is constantly interrupted by games and practices, and they are expected to carry a full load of classes. How they are not always asleep is beyond me. I realize that some of the athletes are in over their heads academically, i.e., they wouldn't have gone to a school like UConn if not for athletics, but, at least for those in my classes, they don't complain and just work harder to catch up.

Student athletes also live their lives under constant public attention. Above is pictured Charde Houston who, like most the basketball players, has had thousands of words written about her psyche, emotions, background, and all sorts of personal things. That just doesn't seem fair. Even athletes with less visibility are constantly monitored by various coaches, advisers, and counselors.

Finally, student athletes give far more to the university that it gives them. Certainly there are perks to being an athlete, in terms of scholarships, housing, and other things, but they still give more. In the case of UConn, we are in the midst of a two-decade, 2.3 billion dollar state-funded building program initiated in the mid 1990s. I've heard from several administrators from that time that it would not have happened if not for the UConn women's basketball team's national championship in 1995. (University of Connecticut-Lobo?). How much would it cost to buy the exposure that sports teams give us? A whole lot more than the administration would be willing to pay. Heck, even the number of student applications jump with each national championship (the numbers are getting pretty high now). Put differently, UConn academics would not be so good without its athletics.

So, here's to all you student athletes!

Now, get back to work.

(P.S., Tina Charles had 18 points and 17 rebounds in only 29 minutes the next night).

Divorce rates by religious affiliation II

(Post five of a series on Christian divorce rates)

Here are more data--reporting divorce rates among ever-married respondents in two national surveys. Why present replications? This avoids basing our knowledge on the peculiarities of just one data set, for it allows us to find patterns across data sets. Yesterday and today's posts contain data from nine different data sets (or series, in the case of the GSS) coming from over 40,000 respondents, and guess what: all nine tell pretty much the same story (and a story contrary to common wisdom about Christians and divorce).

Next week I will discuss what I think that main findings are, but for now I present the data without commentary for people to draw their own conclusions.

National Survey of Families and Households, 1987-8, n = 10,439

52% Black non-active Protestant
49% No religion (e.g., atheist, agnostic)
46% Black active Protestant
42% Non-active Protestant

41% All non-Christians
40% Non-active Catholic
37% All Christians

34% Non-active other religion

33% All other religion
31% Active other religion
26% Active Protestant
24% Active Catholic


National Survey of Midlife Development in the United States, 1995-6, n = 3,622

52% No religion (e.g., atheist, agnostic)
47% Black non-active Protestant
45% Non-active Protestant

45% All non-Christians
44% Black active Protestant
39% Non-active other religion
37% All other religion

35% All Christians

35% Non-active Catholic
32% Active other religion
25% Active Protestant
24% Active Catholic

For these data in tabular form, plus similar analysis of three other data sets, click here.

What do you think? Are these findings what you would have expected?

Technical notes

These surveys have less rich denominational labels, so I have collapsed religious affiliation into fewer categories. I.e., Protestant encompasses both evangelical and mainline. Other encompasses Jewish and other.

For the same reason, Black Protestant here means an African-American who affiliates with a protestant church (as opposed to attending a predominately black denomination).

Percentages report how many respondents had ever been divorced or were currently separated.

Active indicates attending church once a week or more frequently.

Credits and Disclaimers

Same as with yesterday's post.

Next Week

I'll resume this series on Monday with data about the relationship between church attendance and divorce among Christians. Next week I'll also evaluate the work of George Barna and Ron Sider on this issue.

Monday: Divorce rates among Christians by level of church attendance

Divorce rates by religious affiliation I

(Post four of a series on Christian divorce rates)

Perhaps the best known series of sociological data is the General Social Survey (GSS), which contains data on religion and marital outcomes. Below I present the percentage of ever-married respondents who had ever divorced or were currently separated by religious affiliation and frequency of attendance.

Divorce rates by religious affiliation & attendance. General Social Survey, 2000, 2002, 2004 (N= 5,963)

58% Non-active Black Protestants
54% Non-active Evangelicals
51% No religious beliefs (e.g., atheists, agnostics)
48% Non-active other religions

48% All non-Christians
47% Active Black Protestants

42% All non-Christian religions
42% Non-active Mainline Protestants
41% All Christians

41% Non-active Catholics
39% Jewish
38% Active other religions
34% Active Evangelicals
32% Active Mainline Protestants
23% Active Catholics

Data from 1985 – 1999 show nearly identically religion-divorce patterns with an across-the-board increase in divorce rates. For these data.

Technical notes
The coding of the religious variable was taken from Steensland et al. (2000). Click here for full citation and description of coding.

“Active” was defined as attending church services about once a week or more often.

The GSS has various weighting variables for household composition and race oversampling. For simplicity sake, I have analyzed unweighted data, but others use weighted data.

Credits
I thank Christine Zozula for very-able research assistance. These analyses were informed by the work and advice of W. Bradford Wilcox, a sociologist at the University of Virginia who is an expert in this area. Thank you!

Disclaimers
These data are from a working draft. I think that they’ve been done correctly, but I could be wrong. Any mistakes, and they do happen on a somewhat regular basis, are mine, and I will correct them as they come to my attention. I welcome replications of these and all of my analyses. Let me know what you find.

Tomorrow: Divorce rates by religious affiliation II

Christian divorce rates compared to whom?

(Post three of a series on Christian divorce rates)

In thinking about Christian divorce rates, the thing that we really want to know is if being Christian lowers peoples’ likelihood of divorce. This is a causality question, and it is surprisingly difficult to conclusively test with empirical data.

About the only way to definitively answer this question would be to take a large group of married people, randomly assign some to Christian practice, others to other belief systems, and then observe their comparative divorce rates over time. Obviously infeasible (as well as immoral and not approvable by IRB).

For situations like this, where experiments won't work, social scientists have developed many other research strategies, and I’ll be using one of the simplest ones--comparing mean levels across groups. The idea here is that we take one group, e.g., Christians, measure some aspect of them, e.g., divorce rates, and then compare them to another group, e.g., non-Christians.

The question now becomes who to compare to whom? In this context, three comparisons appear to be useful.

1) Christians versus people of no religious beliefs, e.g., atheists and agnostics. This gets at the effect of Christian faith versus having no faith at all.

2) Christians versus people of other religious beliefs, e.g., Muslims, Buddhists, etc…. This is the effect of Christian faith versus other faiths.

3) Active Christians, e.g., those who frequently attend church, versus inactive Christians. This is the effect of greater participation and, presumably, adherence to Christianity.

To be clear, these comparisons can *not* conclusively test if Christianity lowers divorce rates for reasons that I will discuss in a later post, but they are informative, instructive, and, as to be shown tomorrow, counter to prevailing wisdom.

Tomorrow: Divorce rates by religious affiliation I

U-C-O-N-N

(My posts this week are rather cognitive, so I thought I would add something more visceral... my strong feelings about UConn cheers).

There’s a lot to like about being here at UConn, but it does have one big shortcoming—stupid cheers. What happens in a ballgame when its gets very close and the home team needs support? The crowd stands up and spells the school’s name, actually not the entire name, just an abbreviation:

U-C-O-N-N.

(Check it out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IYHWQpGx03k)

Doesn’t this speak of institutional insecurity? As if we don’t think that anyone will know who we are, so we constantly remind them—sort of like someone always reintroducing themselves to others at a party.

This spelling would make sense if it was of the university's whole name because Connecticut isn’t the easiest state to spell. In fact, I was here for a couple of years before I got it right every time.

It actually gets worse. Some guy from the community (Big Red?) usually leads the cheers—spelling out the letters with his body--suggesting that the students might have trouble going at it alone.

Since UConn is the #1 public university in this part of the state, it’s high time that UConn students do better in this important matter.

Prevailing beliefs about Christian divorce rates

(Post two of a series on Christian divorce rates)

For several years now I have heard from various sources that Christians divorce at the same rates as non-Christians, and based on a non-scientific sample of several pastors & various websites, I think that is the prevailing, albeit saddening, wisdom.
This belief traces most directly to the work of George Barna--a researcher with a background in marketing and polling who collects data on various facets of Christianity. In what I think is his latest report on the topic, in 2004, Barna writes:

Although many Christian churches attempt to dissuade congregants from getting a divorce, the research confirmed a finding identified by Barna a decade ago (and further confirmed through tracking studies conducted each year since): born again Christians have the same likelihood of divorce as do non-Christians. Among married born again Christians, 35% have experienced a divorce. That figure is identical to the outcome among married adults who are not born again: 35%.

These and similar statistics produced by Barna have reverberated throughout Christianity, with commentators writing that they send "Christian leaders scrambling for answers" and leave believers "disturbed." Perhaps most prominently, Ron Sider, well-known Christian author, used these statistics for his "stinging jeremiad" (a great phrase, no?) against the Evangelical church in America for living "just like the rest of the world."

When I first heard of these statistics, I had trouble believing them because I was aware of how much emphasis the Christian church put on marriage. Surely this teaching and training had to have some effect? At a personal level, I count the instruction and support received from Christian friends as a major reason that I'm still married, and I've seen the same with others.

So, a few months ago I started looking at data on this issue. First, however, I had to figure out what type of comparisons should be made. That will be the topic of tomorrow's post, and then on Thursday I will start presenting data.

Tomorrow: Christian divorce rates compared to whom?

Jimmy Swaggart's picture

I just came across a very interesting line of discussion about one of my earlier posts--about why pastors not falling into scandal.

My first reaction was great pleasure that someone took my ideas seriously (this pleasure, I suppose, is why I chose academia). Then I realized that these pastors understand the issues much better than I.

What interested me most was a concern raised by one commenter about the picture I had posted of Jimmy Swaggart. I attached a photo of Jimmy Swaggart's famous crying-confession to my post, just because that video-capture is perhaps the best known image of recent church scandal.

The commenter pointed out, however, that this is highlighting Jimmy Swaggart's sin, and should we just let it go. Now, I'm not a big fan of Jimmy Swaggart, for various reasons, but the more general principle here is the danger of highlighting other peoples' wrongdoing. I know for a fact that I would not want people publicizing my sins (which, there are many people who could have a lot to say), so why do it to others--even famous people with famous sins.

Okay. I went ahead and changed the photo on the post & will keep an eye on that in the future. Point taken.

Statistics about Christianity

(Post one of a series on Christian divorce rates)

There is disconnection between the social statistics produced by academics studying religion and those of interest to pastors and everyday Christian practitioners.

Academics like to publish books and, especially, peer-reviewed journal articles. Three main journals devoted to the study of religion are Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, Religious Studies Review, and Sociology of Religion (edited by my friend David Yamane), though occasional articles on religion appear in many social science journals. Most articles presenting statistics report multivariate analyses--equations of containing multiple predictor variables. Academics usually report their results in tables containing dozens of numbers measuring the effects of variables and estimated certainty of their effects (e.g., regression coefficients and standard errors).

The problem with this approach, though, is that most people outside of academia neither read these journals nor would they understand the statistics even if they did. (Sometimes I think the same holds true for those of us in academics, but that's another story...). To the extent that the everyday Christian cares about statistics, which understandably may not be much, they are interested in univariate or bivariate statistics. For example, what percentage of Christians believe “x” (sociologists frequently refer to a mysterious “x” when using a generic example—I’m not sure why not other letters). Or do more of this type of person, say Christian, experience “x” (there it is again) more than that type of person, say non-Christian.

It’s not that academics aren’t interested in simpler statistics, rather by training and rewards we gravitate toward more complex statistical analysis, and if we present uni- or bivariate statistics, we usually hide them in the recesses of our articles such that few will ever find them. Also, we probably couldn’t get our quantitative articles accepted for publication in good journals without multivariate analyses, so we make sure to emphasize them.

This gets at a potential value of blogs—as a place to share research information that either would never make it to peer-reviewed publication or, if on its way, is presented in a more consumer-friendly presentation.

As such, I would like to try using this blog to present on occasion statistical data that might be of interest to Christians. I’m starting with a series of posts about divorce rates among Christians, for I suspect that there is a lot of misunderstanding (and perhaps misinformation) about this topic.

Thoughts?

Tomorrow: Prevailing beliefs about Christian divorce rates

How much is a good blog?

Something that I enjoy in sociology (and of sociologists) is creating theories for everyday things.

As a great example, Notre Dame sociologist Dan Myers posted a wonderful definition of what constitutes a power ballad in rock music.

In getting this blog going, I've been thinking of how often I should post, and what the trade-off is between quality and quantity.

How often should one post to keep readers' interest? If it's once a month, the blog will feel stale. If it's once an hour, there will always be new material, the writer has to quit their job, family, etc... to keep it going. (Though some people manage multiple daily posts and appear to have an otherwise normal life; e.g., Scot McKnight). I think that there is a threshold effect of about once every day or two--enough so that most people checking it will find new material each time. Much less than that might signal waning interest by the writer, much more is more often than most people check blogs.

As for quality versus quantity--I could post frequently, but what about when I don't have anything to say? Is it better to have new, not very good material or to just not write anything? One way to think about this is to ask whether blog readers add or average the quality of postings in evaluating a blog? If adding, two good posts + one not so good post is slightly better, certainly not worse, than just two good posts. With averaging, two good posts + one not so good post is worse than just two good posts. I'm guessing that readers mainly average (once the above mentioned quantity-threshold effect is reached). To illustrate, I was reading a blog that had some lively posts, and then a post in which the writer spoke of going to a movie with the family and thinking it was okay but that another one was better. I had QWERTY embossed backwards on my forehead from having fallen asleep while reading that post, and I don't think that I've checked back since--not as a punishment, but more from having redefined the blog from that post.

Thoughts?