Preliator February 2010 Survey: Results and analysis [part 1/2]

As you know (and if you don’t, go in your corner), I recently conducted the Preliator February 2010 Survey from the 11^th of February to yesterday, the 11^th of March with the goal of finding out just who were the habitual frequenters of this little hole-in-the-world, along with what they thought of the blog, and what they’d like to see change in the future. During its monthlong span, I received a total of 18 responses, some of them funny, others more telling, and all of them quite interesting.

And now, here are the results! Keep in mind that the closest I’ve ever come to taking a statistics course was learning how to calculate a basic average in my second year of secondary school (equal to high school for you Yanks), so chances are my analysis may contain a number of errors and mistakes. But then, PollDaddy is brilliant and helpful enough to create all sorts of charts and graphs for me, so I don’t really need to do any serious number-crunching. Yay!

Now, seeing as I’ve only received 18 responses, this obviously does not count as a comprehensive, or perhaps even reliable, sampling of my readership. I expect that if I’d received 30, 40, or a 100 responses (as if …), the answers received may have turned out a bit different, or even quite so. As a result, it’s obvious that in no way is this a scientific poll, and the results ought to be taken with a tiny grain of salt due to the possible margin of error.

PollDaddy’s survey report gives me a panoply of information to the point where I hardly know how to organize it all in a blog post (and it’s a massive one at that, so be warned), so I’ll start with examining each individual question, followed by any other miscellaneous information provided.

Jump to a section:
01: Age • 02: Sex/gender • 03: Sexual/gender identity • 04: Self-identification • 05: Socio-political ideology • 06: How did you find Preliator

01 – What is your age?

“20—24”: 33.33% (6) / “30—34”: 22.22% (4) / “25—29”: 22.22% (4) / “40—44”: 5.56% (1) / “50—54”: 5.56% (1) / “35—39”: 5.56% (1) / “15—19”: 5.56% (1) [click for full size]

Apparently, a basic question leads to expected results. I do find it mildly interesting and amusing, though, that the majority of my readers seem to be just about a decade older than I am, with an average age of about 28.6 years. Also interesting is that whilst only one reader of roughly my age responded, I got a couple who are over 40 and even 50, which is really quite neat. (And, to be humble, a bit touching. Guess I’m more than just a lawn-trespassing whippersnapper to some. Yays!)

02 – What is your sex/gender?

“Male”: 61.11% (11) / “Female”: 38.89% (7) [click for full size]

It seems fairly natural that a blog written by a guy, from a male perspective (I can’t deny that I’m biased due to my gender, of course, though hopefully only slightly), would thereby attract a readership that’s a bit more masculine-heavy. Then again, though, one will remember that when Jen at Blag Hag conducted her own survey of her audience (which is what gave me the idea for mine – so much for originality), she was rather surprised to see how the vast majority of her readers were also male (outnumbering females 72% (335) to 27% (135)). This was particularly revealing, considering she’s a female blogger who writes from an overtly feminist perspective, so it would seem that “birds of a feather” is apparently not always the case.

What these results reveal more than anything, though, is the clear discrepancy between the numbers of openly atheist and/or generally nonreligious males and females, at least on the Web. It’s a known and growing issue within the atheist community that there seems to be a conspicuous and mildly concerning lack of atheist women; there are plenty, of course – Jen also has a post featuring a massive list of some of the most prominent and outspoken of them – but one only has to note that when asked who their favorite atheists are, most people will most likely answer with names such as Richard Dawkins, PZ Myers, Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris, and etc., to realize how comparatively small the female half of atheists seems to be. Of course, while there are likely plenty of reasons for this and things we could do to try and solve the issue, it’s a matter for a wholly different post.

03 – What is your sexual/gender identity?

Yeah, I used the long-criticized Kinsey scale, but then, if anyone knows a better method of judging a group’s sexuality without resorting to freestyle answers, I’d like to hear it.

“Exclusively heterosexual”: 77.78% (14) / “Predominantly heterosexual, more than incidentally homosexual”: 11.11% (2) / “Asexual (non-sexual)”: 5.56% (1) / “Predominantly heterosexual, incidentally homosexual”: 5.56% (1) [click for full size]

Now, this one actually surprised me a little. Judging by these numbers (and again, these are rather unreliable in terms of thoroughness), it would seem that 100% of my readership is heterosexual, with a few demonstrating some minor-to-moderate homosexual leanings now and then. I actually expected that I’d have at least one or two identify themselves as either gay or bisexual out of 18 responses, but it turned out otherwise. Odd.

04 – If you are non-religious, how do you prefer to describe yourself?

There is no shortage of labels we godless folks apply to ourselves, depending on which “brand” of godlessness we share (from moderate to staunch, lenient towards religion or overly critical, silent to outspoken, etc.). Hence why this question. (There was also the option for any religious people who did read my blog to identify their faith under “other”.) Multiple answers were allowed. I probably forgot a good number of them, in which case people were asked to enter their preference(s) under “Other”.

“Atheist”: 37.5% (15) / “Non-religious”: 10% (4) / “Skeptic”: 10% (4) / “Freethinker”: 7.5% (3) / “Secularist”: 7.5% (3) / “Humanist”: 7.5% (3) / “Agnostic”: 7.5% (3) / “Non-theist”: 5% (2) / “Other”: 5% (2) / “Anti-religious (dislike religion itself, not necessarily religious people)”: 2.5% (1) [click for full size]

Other answers:

• Nihilist/Amoralist/Monist
• I'm a preacher's kid, too.

Nothing very surprising here, either. It’s expected that a blog openly billing itself as atheist, written by an atheist and with content concerning atheism, would attract individuals who openly label themselves as atheists. I find it odd that only one responder also chose “anti-religious”; judging by the invective aimed towards religion, you’d think more atheists would openly admit to their distaste and criticism for it. (Note that the answer choice says “anti-religious”, not “anti-religious people”; it’s a critical distinction to make between hating on religion itself, not necessarily those who adhere to it. I, for one, certainly am anti-religious in that sense.) It’s also interesting how so comparatively few chose “skeptic” and “secularist”, as I’d reckon they inherently applied to most atheists and non-religious people – or, at least those who frequent this blog with any regularity.

05 – What is your general socio-political stance/ideology?

Considering how most of the commentary on this blog revolves around stupidity and injustices in the realms of politics and society and is written from an overly liberal perspective, I thought it natural to inquire about people’s beliefs when it came to political ideologies.

“Liberal (moderate)”: 50% (9) / “Liberal (staunch)”: 11.11% (2) / “Anarchist”: 11.11% (2) / “Progressive”: 11.11% (2) / “Other”: 11.11% (2) / “Libertarian”: 5.56% (1) [click for full size]

Other answers:

• moderate libertarian
• Depends on the issue. I follow evidence and vote/support whatever is most correct.

Once again, nothing really unexpected. I may be a staunch liberal, myself, but most people out there are moderates regardless of the nature of their beliefs. It’s a little interesting (by which I mean, mildly amusing) that not one identified as remotely conservative (though we have two libertarians, which I consider as a sort of middle-grounds between the left and the right). At least everyone knows where they stand, judging by the empty “Uncertain” row.

06 – How did you first find Preliator?

A deceptively minor question: how did you find this blog? Which, of course, translates into: how do I make my blog more easily findable?

“Someone else’s blogroll”: 38.89% (7) / “Twitter”: 27.78% (5) / “Other”: 11.11% (2) / “Google/other search engine”: 5.56% (1) / “Mojoey’s Atheist Blogroll”: 5.56% (1) / “Through the Please Don’t Label Me campaign”: 5.56% (1) [click for full size]

Other answers:

• Shared item in Google Reader
• On Jen's blog

Amusing to see that most of my readers seem to have found me through “someone else’s blogroll” … Personally, I would hazard a guess, judging purely from my Sitemeter statistics over time, that this would primarily be from PersonalFailure’s Forever in Hell (which isn’t nearly as macabre as the title sounds, so check it out, unless you want her to smite you when she becomes the Empress of the Entire Freakin’ World … </inside joke>). Most of the rest found me through Twitter, where I pimp shamelessly advertise tweet my posts as I make them. And frankly, I’m surprised that even one person (much less one of the 18 survey responders) found my little blog in Mojoey’s massive 1,000-member-plus Atheist Blogroll. So many entries there, you’d think mine would just melt in and disappear. I guess promotion works.

One thing that does surprise me, though, is how few say they found me through the “Please Don’t Label Me” affair, where my little dissection of the stupidity from Ed West at the Telegraph on the subject of the atheist bus ads concerning the unfair and premature labeling of children basically exploded in popularity (by this blog’s standards, anyway), earning me nearly 1,000 individual visits in 24 hours (as opposed to my then-average of about 20—30) and dozens of comments (and this is apart from the storm of tweets I received). The lesson I learned from that incident: badmouthing stupid people particularly helps, especially when on the subject of something notorious. But, I digress; my point is that I’m surprised so few of those who found me then apparently chose to stay. You’d think nearly a thousand visits in a single day (and hundreds more in the days and weeks that followed) would have bumped my subscribers number a bit. =P (Hey, not complaining, merely observing.)

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Click here to go to part two.

Please note that for convenience’s sake, I have disabled comments for this post. Please use part two to voice your feedback instead. I’d love to hear anything you have to say about the Survey and its results (or my analysis).