I promised to follow up some earlier posts addressing the question,
are prisoners more religious than the general population, or not?
We have on hand a self-reported inmate religious affiliation list for the
year 1997 from Hugh,
and a self-reported non-inmate
religious affiliation list for two years: 1990 and 2001
The question at hand may be cast as:
is the Hugh list significantly different from the Brian lists for 1990 or 2001?
It will help to aggregate the classes first, so as to make the
Hugh and Brian lists more comparable.
Hugh 1997 in % magnitude order:
Protestant 33.3%
Catholic 31.4% Christian sub-total 64.7%
Non/unknown 19.7%
All other Relig 15.6% All religions sub-total 80.3%
total 100%
Brian 1990 in % magnitude order:
Protestant 54.9%
Catholic 26.2%
other Christian 4.6% Christian sub-total 85.7%
none/unknown 10.5%
Other religions 3.3% All religions sub-total 89.0%
Total 99.5%
Brian 2001 in % magnitude order:
Protestant 45.4%
Catholic 24.5%
Other Christian 6.8% Christian sub-total 76.7%
none/unknown 19.6%
Other religions 3.7% All religions 80.4%
Total 100%
Brian Church members mostly Yr 2000+
Protestant 39%
Catholic 33% Christian sub-total 72%
Other rel + none 28% All religions N/A
Total 100%
The aggregations in each sample collecting all religions appear to be
lowest in Hugh's sample and the Christian aggregation appears
to be lowest in Hugh's sample - but it is not at all clear that this
difference
is significant - so it cannot yet be said from these data that prison
populations are in fact less religious - but the data point that way.