Study on Religous Beliefs of Autistics uses WP PPR Forum

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aghogday
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28 Aug 2011, 5:52 pm

First scientific study I have seen on Autism that mentions Wrong Planet. The researchers used 192 posts from this specific PPR forum as evidence that High Functioning Autistic people were more likely to be Atheist or Agnostic than the general public.

When you click on the link you have to hover you mouse on the lower middle part of the introduction to get an arrow to appear to scroll down to the text of the research.

Took a moment to figure it out.

http://bu.academia.edu/CatherineCaldwellHarris/Papers/636085/Religious_Belief_Systems_of_Persons_with_High_Functioning_Autism



Philologos
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28 Aug 2011, 6:31 pm

Love to know where they are getting their general public.

As a long term academic, I suspect I would have to take that as a seriously flawed research design. PPR is NOT a neutral site - theists are targets and the ones who can handle being targeted - if you are Green Monkey long enough in enough settings you can take a lot - get tired of not being able to have a serious discussion.

Actually, there are more theists here than I would have expected, and certain of the atheists a whole lot more belligerent than I am used to [beating my brother all hollow].



Master_Pedant
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28 Aug 2011, 6:31 pm

In addition to being a novel study in terms of studying the religion of people on the Autism spectrum, it's also pretty distinct in the burgeoning field of "neurotheology" for studying the cogntive aspects of atheists and agnostics.


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Vexcalibur
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28 Aug 2011, 6:35 pm

That's a good lesson in how not to take samples for your study :/


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Master_Pedant
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28 Aug 2011, 6:43 pm

Philologos wrote:
As a long term academic, I suspect I would have to take that as a seriously flawed research design. PPR is NOT a neutral site - theists are targets and the ones who can handle being targeted - if you are Green Monkey long enough in enough settings you can take a lot - get tired of not being able to have a serious discussion.


So? Is any site (or any place you'd get any sample from) truly "neutral". And, I'm reading the study and they compared the results from this forum against another forum (I think there's also an offline component as well).


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28 Aug 2011, 6:44 pm

Some people just can't handle the truth...

:lol:



Awesomelyglorious
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28 Aug 2011, 7:02 pm

I don't think that the method is entirely flawed, but I HAVE TO admit that I personally question it. Maybe it is information worth publishing, but it is a very fallible source of information.



aghogday
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28 Aug 2011, 7:03 pm

Philologos wrote:
Love to know where they are getting their general public.

As a long term academic, I suspect I would have to take that as a seriously flawed research design. PPR is NOT a neutral site - theists are targets and the ones who can handle being targeted - if you are Green Monkey long enough in enough settings you can take a lot - get tired of not being able to have a serious discussion.

Actually, there are more theists here than I would have expected, and certain of the atheists a whole lot more belligerent than I am used to [beating my brother all hollow].


General public was a poor choice of words on my part. There were several other methods of research in the study. In the internet forum study they attempted to target a similiar demographic group without autism on the religion/philosphy forum of golivewire/teenforum.com.

This forum appeals to those across age groups. Few teens I know of visit the Wrongplanet PPR Forum. It seems like that might be a significant factor that could effect the results.

However, the 26% atheist number derived was a fairly conservative number based on the informal polls that have been done here, that have gained answers from the general discussion area. I see that number as a fair representation to support their final conclusion from what I have personaly seen here over the months I have been here.

The number of atheists between the two groups was 26% WP vs 17% golivewire. The largest disparity was between WP Christians vs Golivewire/teenforum Christians. Looking at the graph it appears approximately 38% christian on Golivewire and 17% Christian on WP.



aghogday
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28 Aug 2011, 7:08 pm

Also, of note in the conclusions they reference the higher percentage of atheists found among scientists in comparison to cognitive similarity between that group and the HFA Autistic group. The information on higher percentages of Atheists among Scientists has been confirmed, though, I think, for a number of years now, if I remember correctly.



Philologos
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28 Aug 2011, 8:25 pm

Master_Pedant wrote:
So? Is any site (or any place you'd get any sample from) truly "neutral". And, I'm reading the study and they compared the results from this forum against another forum (I think there's also an offline component as well).


Could one find a less slanting - one side ot 'tother - web site? Maybe not - have not tried. I would doubt it. Which is why I would not try to find an on-line sample.

If I were doing it - or let's say the linguistic equivalent of it - I know people who have done for example studies of stylistic preferences - I would want to find a series of communities - ranging from university enclaves to company towns to green lawn suburbs to farming county seats. Pick a sampling tracking age, gender, a couple other factors.. Divide up by +/- AS - ideally more sophisticated, but you can save some things for the fourth follow up study.

Then - rates of +/- atheist (or theist - agnosticism complicates things) by AS versus NT by community type.

Granted, this is not a quicky armchair paper - takes a bit of time and thought. But what scholar would rather do it facile and superficial?



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28 Aug 2011, 9:06 pm

I hope I wasn't used as one of the subjects, I have never been formally diagnosed, only suspected. It's quite possible (even probable) that I have type II schizophrenia. Very similiar in many respects.



aghogday
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28 Aug 2011, 9:45 pm

wcoltd wrote:
I hope I wasn't used as one of the subjects, I have never been formally diagnosed, only suspected. It's quite possible (even probable) that I have type II schizophrenia. Very similiar in many respects.


Subjects studied were only those that identified themselves as diagnosed with HFA. The period of time studied was 2008-2009, so there would be no possibility you would have been studied unless you were a member at that time and identified yourself as an individual diagnosed with Aspergers.

The only category listed here that could reliably be understood as HFA is "have Aspergers diagnosed"; It's a bit strange to me that they didn't use the term Aspergers instead of HFA, though, because there are some people diagnosed with a specific diagnosis of Autism, considered as HFA, that identified themselves as "have other autism spectrum disorder " here by their report when they signed up.

Other Autism Spectrum Disorder would also include those with PDD NOS; some of which are high functioning.



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29 Aug 2011, 10:53 am

Teenagers are more likely to have the faith of their parents still; odd site to use as comparison.

I agree with Philologos that this forum would present a distorted view.

But I do feel that Aspies are more likely to be atheist than the general population. I notice the difference on the parenting forum, as well.


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29 Aug 2011, 4:27 pm

Awesomelyglorious wrote:
I don't think that the method is entirely flawed, but I HAVE TO admit that I personally question it. Maybe it is information worth publishing, but it is a very fallible source of information.
It is a terrible method. What they did is look for users in the internet that claimed to be autistic and then counted the ones that are atheists. The guys that made the study seem to miss that people in the internet can easily lie about any of those facts and that's just the tip of the iceberg.

I'd have no doubts that having autistic traits makes you less likely to keep your family's traditions, but I just think that this study is flawed and not a very good proof of that idea.


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aghogday
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29 Aug 2011, 5:06 pm

Vexcalibur wrote:
Awesomelyglorious wrote:
I don't think that the method is entirely flawed, but I HAVE TO admit that I personally question it. Maybe it is information worth publishing, but it is a very fallible source of information.
It is a terrible method. What they did is look for users in the internet that claimed to be autistic and then counted the ones that are atheists. The guys that made the study seem to miss that people in the internet can easily lie about any of those facts and that's just the tip of the iceberg.

I'd have no doubts that having autistic traits makes you less likely to keep your family's traditions, but I just think that this study is flawed and not a very good proof of that idea.


I see it as flawed as well, they could have least used another website with a similiar age demographic.

Just out of curiosity, in your opinion, do you think the result of 26% of people with Aspergers with Atheist views that they measured on this forum, is a reasonable measure for it here in this forum, and/or in the general population of people with Aspergers?

I was surprised it was that low here, but now that I think about it, my opinion is biased because I am judging it by responses I have seen to that specific topic, rather than responses to every thread here. Few if any of the people here probabaly look at consecutive posts from every thread, like the researchers did.

When we do polls here on the subject in this forum, those results are obviously flawed as an indication here on the site, because they are not random surveys.

In my opinion, the study done here may not accurately reflect the difference in beliefs between the same demographic of people with Aspergers and with no ASD's, but it may be the best indication of the actual numbers of atheists that visit this forum, as opposed to the polls that have been iniated here by members. I can't think of a more accurate way to measure that here than the method used by the researchers.

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Awesomelyglorious
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29 Aug 2011, 5:17 pm

Vexcalibur wrote:
Awesomelyglorious wrote:
I don't think that the method is entirely flawed, but I HAVE TO admit that I personally question it. Maybe it is information worth publishing, but it is a very fallible source of information.
It is a terrible method. What they did is look for users in the internet that claimed to be autistic and then counted the ones that are atheists. The guys that made the study seem to miss that people in the internet can easily lie about any of those facts and that's just the tip of the iceberg.

I'd have no doubts that having autistic traits makes you less likely to keep your family's traditions, but I just think that this study is flawed and not a very good proof of that idea.

Vex, the same objection exists for survey data. The issue is that surveys are STILL upheld as necessary.