Questionnaire
Please fill in the questionnaire below, any questions which are irrelevant to you please leave blank.
- Are you male or female? Please circle
- What religion are you a follower of:
- Do you think that the strictness(people don’t follow the rules) of a certain religion has gone down, if so state which religion below:
- Why do you think this is?
- Do you follow all the rules and behave in the certain way your religion tells you to? (E.g. don’t drink alcohol, but you drink it)?
- Do you think religion has changed through time?
- Why do you think this is?
- Does your religion influence your life, if so in what ways?
Results
The result of my investigation were very interesting:
The results of my questionnaires, showed that I had asked more males than females (I asked 20 males and I had only asked 10 females). The results of males a had females different as they had different opinions, most males felt strongly about religion and females had a neutral point of view.
Analysis of questionnaires
Question 1, this showed that more males had been asked than females. The reason why I asked the gender of the person was because my theory was that different genders may have a different opinion on religion and by asking this on the questionnaire I could see if there was any correlation. There was a correlation, as males felt more strongly about religion (there answers had more effort into them), when females did care but not as much compared to males.
Question 2, the reason why I asked the faith of the person answering the questionnaire was because I thought certain religious followers may have different opinions, this was true as not many Christian’s lives were affect that much by their religion. There was a correlation between this question and question 8.
Question 3, most people answered the same type of thing, “this has gone down in all religions especially western ones”. Out of 30 questionnaires most of them had the same sort of answer, this tells me that gender or religion don’t change the opinion of people on some things.
Question 4, people had many things to blame for the strictness of religions declining, they blamed money, greed and corruption. But for the increase in religious belief they did not have anything accurate to blame it on, they just said, “because people may just choose to be more strict.
Question 5, this question asked people if they follow all the rules of their religion, this question made people think how religious they are? And many may not have known if they do or do not abide by all the rules of their religions, as they may not know all of the rules and regulations themselves.
Question 6, the results of this question tell me that out of a random 30 people, roughly 20 think religion has changed through time. I did also ask a range of people, they were not all from one faith and one gender, but however they were all from the similar social class and the similar geographical location. These factors may have effected the results of my questionnaires.
Question7, in this question I did not get much of an answer, there are many factors why that is but I think it is simply because people may feel that religion has changed (things are different, but might not know why that has happened).
Question 8, two thirds of the people said ‘yes’ religion does influence my life and the rest said ‘no’. This may just prove how many people are strict in the following of their religion, but it may also tell us how people’s lives are affected by their religion. The questionnaires showed that people just wrote yes or no as an answer, they did not give in-depth answers to explain their claims. This may also have been because they could not be ‘bothered’ as they came to the end of the questionnaire or this may mean they simply cannot describe how religion is changing their lives, but they can realise that it is.
Analysis of interview
I interviewed two different people, one was a very religious Muslim and the other person did not follow in any religion or believe in the existence of a god like being.
The interview had open question; this is because I wanted the interviewee to elaborate more on their ideas about religion and how it has changed.
They both had very interesting views on the change of religion and I found out that people did not feel so strongly about the topic ‘they didn’t really have much of an interest’ (this was not helpful and if I were to carry out the interviews again I would resolve this problem by asking people who feel strongly on this topic).
Conclusion
I have finished my investigation in to how has religion changed, and what were the factors affecting this change. My conclusion is that religion has changed but mainly due to its followers changing it to how it suits them. As the technological field has advanced since ancient times (when the religions began), so has the quality of life and this means that people will change there ways of living,
For example in the ancient days when people used to go on a ‘Hajj’ (Islamic religious pilgrimage) it was the journey of their life. They saved money for all their lives and while making the journey it took them a months even years on horseback or on foot (as transport was not as good as today’s is), and now people arrive in their air conditioned coaches and consider it more of a holiday, some people go more than once on their life.