Results of a survey of 400 Christians on charity, altruism and EA related topics
Results of a survey of 400 Christians on charity, altruism and EA related topics
By Vesa Hautala
This post presents some findings from a recent survey on attitudes of practicing Christians in the UK and US towards charity, altruism, and certain EA related topics.
This post introduces the survey and presents the results with some very preliminary personal observations. I’m planning on writing a second post with more in-depth analysis next.
Introduction
At the end of May and early June 2022 EA for Christians ran a survey about Christian attitudes to charity and altruism. The purpose of the survey was to provide information for a book project by EACH and in general provide EACH with data about Christian attitudes relevant to Effective Altruism.
The survey participants were 400 people from the US and UK who identify as Christian and participate regularly in public and private religious activities[1]. The participants were recruited and prescreened using Prolific, a service that provides respondents to online studies. The participants filled an online questionnaire of 35 multiple choice questions.
The survey was run in six different segments with varying numbers of respondents: age groups 18–29, 30–49, and 50–64 for males and females. This was done to achieve a sex[2] and age distribution that approximates the demographics of the Christians population in the UK and US[3]. This procedure was necessary because Prolific’s userbase skews heavily towards younger people and women compared to the Christian population in the UK and US. Ages 65 and above were excluded because there were not enough respondents available in Prolific.
Limitations of the survey
The participants in this study were all people who fill surveys for money
Participants have an incentive to fill the survey fast so answer quality may not be optimal
Attention checks were implemented in the study to mitigate negative effects from this, but they only guarantee a minimum level of attention
Survey design and execution by a non-expert, though with input from experts
No corresponding survey for a non-Christian population, so hard to compare Christians to the whole population
The results
What I personally found surprising
much more Christians than I expected agreed that animals can suffer (about 80%) and that they have rights (about 75%)
reported concern for effectiveness and impact was higher than I expected
Christians prioritized Christian causes and helping other Christians much less than I would have thought
Only 15% agreed that Christians should prioritize helping other Christians over non-Christians, 26% agreed that Christians should primarily donate to Christian charities and 26% agreed that Christians should prioritize evangelism over other causes
Questions 1–25
How much do you agree with the following statements?
Questions 26–35
How much more effective do you think the best charities are compared to typical ones? (meaning how much they achieve with the same donated sum)
23,7% usually there are no large differences between typical and best charities
11,9% less than 2x
35,9% 2–10x
24,5% 10–100x
4% 100x or more
When I think about how much people in my situation ought to donate to charity, I think that the amounts I donate are
9,1% much less than I feel is right
31,1% less than I feel is right
53,3% about right
6,6% go beyond the call of duty
0,0% go much beyond the call of duty
About what percentage of your income did you donate to a church in 2021?
14,1% — I did not donate to a church in 2021
19,4% — 1%
12,1% — 2%
17,7% — 2 - 5%
22,2% — 5 - 10%
13,1% — 10 - 20%
1,3% — 20% +
About what percentage of your income did you donate to charity (excluding donations to churches) in 2021?
11,9% — I did not donate to a church in 2021
23,2 % — 1%
18,2% — 2%
23,7% — 2 - 5%
14,1% — 5 - 10%
7,3% — 10 - 20%
1,5% — 20% +
How important it is for these areas to receive additional donations? Rank from most to least important.
How important do you consider the following for career choice? Rank from most to least important.
When choosing who to vote for, how important the following are to you?
The trolley problem (classic version) – the right thing to do is to pull the lever
Strongly disagree 6,3%
Somewhat disagree 7,1%
Neither agree nor disagree 20,7%
Somewhat agree 45,7%
Strongly agree 20,2%
[1] The exact wording of the prescreening questions was set by Prolific and could not be altered. For religious participation the question was “Do you participate in regular religious activities?” Our survey was filled by respondents who answered this question with the option “Yes. Both public and private” (as opposed to only public, only private, or rather not say). The other prescreening question was “What is your religious affiliation?”, with the answer option “Christianity (e.g. Baptist, Church of England, Roman Catholic, Methodist, Jehovah Witness, etc.)”. This unfortunately did not distinguish different types of Christians or Christian-adjacent groups. Prolific is supposed to show the study only participants who match the prescreening criteria but allows validating the prescreeners and filtering out those who provide incompatible information.
[2] A sex distinction of male and female was used instead of a gender distinction and no ‘Other’ or ‘Do not wish to answer’ option was included in order to match the available demographic data about the US Christians population, which only had a binary sex distinction. The data used was from the Pew Research Center’s 2014 Religious landscape study. Pew Research Center’s documentation is somewhat unclear on whether their distinction is a gender or sex distinction, but the closest match in Prolific seemed to be sex.
[3] The age distribution was based on both US and UK data whereas the sex ratio was based on US data alone because UK data was not easily available.