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A survey consisting of three questions has been sent to all members of the House of Bishops of the Episcopal Church (ECUSA). Sponsored by a hitherto-unknown group called Lay Episcopalians for the Anglican Communion (LEAC), the survey arrived with a cover letter of support from former Archbishop of Canterbury George Carey.
The text of the three questions reads:
QUESTION 1. If you were to vote today in SECRET balloting on whether you NOW would prefer that General Convention 2003 had or had not approved a measure supporting consecration of The Rev V. Gene Robinson, how would you vote?
two response choices: prefer approval / prefer disapproval
A supplementary question asks whether or not the respondent voted on this at General Convention 2003.
QUESTION 2. If you were to vote today in SECRET balloting on whether you NOW would prefer that General Convention 2003 had or had not allowed Episcopal Church measures permitting procedures for priests to bless or officially recognize same-sex domestic partners, how would you vote?
two response choices: prefer approval / prefer disapproval
A supplementary question asks whether or not the respondent voted on this at General Convention 2003.
QUESTION 3. Is your desire to remain personally in the Anglican Communion stronger than your desire for solidarity within ECUSA, whether or not ECUSA is in the communion?
two response choices: yes / no
An introductory letter assures respondents that the survey is “blind, confidential, and anonymous”. The objective of the survey is “bringing and holding together as many Episcopalians as possible in a single, diverse, inclusive province of the Anglican Communion”.
Scanned copies of the survey’s two pages and Lord Carey’s cover letter are posted here.
The survey has provoked ECUSA Presiding Bishop Frank Griswold to discourage bishops from participating in the survey and to protest to Lord Carey for endorsing it.
In an e-mail dated March 8, Bishop Griswold said he was “suspicious of anything that is anonymous and that the questions themselves lead me to believe the intention of those who have asked [Archbishop Carey] to circulate the questionnaire is far from benign.”
Jim Ince of Bethesda, Md., one of the organizers, defends the survey:
“I think it is an interesting and good idea to see where things are,” he said, noting “we will do everything with truth and clarity.”
. . .
Mr. Ince said the authors of the questionnaire were a “lay-led group” that was “responding to the pleas from all sides” for honest conversation within the Episcopal Church.
. . .
Mr. Ince said frustration with the opacity of the deliberations and the lack of leadership from the Episcopal Church’s hierarchy prompted the questionnaire. “The clergy just don’t want to get involved in anything,” he said.
I certainly sympathise with the desire to get honest opinions out in the open in hopes of breaking through the impasse. However, I’m afraid that this survey will not succeed in accomplishing that purpose.
From the perspective of technical statistics, anonymous surveys are a very bad idea. Confidentiality is a must, of course, but anonymity is counter-productive because that makes it impossible to control survey operations and to conduct an intelligent analysis.
Mail-out surveys like this one can be set aside by respondents to be done later, and then forgotten or misplaced. If addressed to a business office, the survey may not even reach the intended recipient. Follow-up, usually by telephone, is necessary to contact those who have not responded, let them know how important their response is, and hopefully persuade them to fill out the survey. Obviously, that cannot be done if there is no list of non-respondents.
When it comes time for analysis of results, moreover, it is essential to know who answered and who didn’t in order properly to assess the returns that came in.
The surveyors would have done much better to hire a professional and respected public-opinion polling firm to design and conduct the survey. The questions would have been written and tested by professionals. The completed surveys could have been sent directly to the polling firm instead of LEAC, a group that no one really knows anything about. That would have improved the survey’s credibility and, I think, confirm that LEAC is really serious about this project.
Setting aside statistical matters, it seems to me also that those who support ordination of Bp Robinson and blessing of same-sex unions have no incentive to complete the survey. They have nothing to gain. Their interest clearly lies with minimizing the number of surveys returned. Indeed, Bp Griswold supports exactly that tactic. All non-respondents will, rightly in my view, be assumed to support the ECUSA status quo on those issues.
Living Church link via titusonenine.
