Astrology's cultural correlation

This isn't as much of an astrology discussion as an anthropological one. For my anthropology class, I had to conduct a research method on any area and I chose astrology because it would keep me interested and I thought the product of the survey would be of interest to others.

Although I won't be able to go indepth or attach a wordpad document for a few days, it would be nice to discuss this if anyone is interested, and analyze the product of research. Now to explain what I did for the survey and the survey itself.

The survey itself asked questions, including:
*Do you believe in astrology? Why or why not?
*A number scale representation of expression of belief.
*What is your sun sign?
*What are some positive and negative attributes of it?
*Can you name all the astrological signs?
*Do you know what signs you are compatible with?
*Do you have any favorite signs?
*Do you try to avoid any signs?
*Have any signs predominated you life?
*Do you know what a sun sign is or what it does/means?
*Do you know what a moon sign is or what it does/means?
*Do you know what the planets are or their functions?
*Do you know what the houses are or their functions?
*Do you know what a rising sign is or its functions?

I came up with these questions because I thought that they were the "basics" for a beginner to know before they could make an accurate judgment about believing in astrology or not. Basically, a person should not make the decision that they can believe in it unless they have covered the basics and know a little bit how the system works.

I'll post some of the statistics I come up with a little later and leave this open to general discussion, if any.

rainwolf said:

This isn't as much of an astrology discussion as an anthropological one. For my anthropology class, I had to conduct a research method on any area and I chose astrology because it would keep me interested and I thought the product of the survey would be of interest to others.

Although I won't be able to go indepth or attach a wordpad document for a few days, it would be nice to discuss this if anyone is interested, and analyze the product of research. Now to explain what I did for the survey and the survey itself.

The survey itself asked questions, including:
*Do you believe in astrology? Why or why not? because it reflects what is going on in my life 9 times out of 10
*A number scale representation of expression of belief.
*What is your sun sign? libra
*What are some positive and negative attributes of it? positive is finding the truth of a situation by weighing both sides negative is agonising with decisions sometimes YEARS
*Can you name all the astrological signs? yes
*Do you know what signs you are compatible with? yes
*Do you have any favorite signs? cancer pisces sagitarius capricorn
*Do you try to avoid any signs? not particularly
*Have any signs predominated you life? in last 10 years scorpios
*Do you know what a sun sign is or what it does/means? it means the core of you
*Do you know what a moon sign is or what it does/means? it is your emotional day to day nature
*Do you know what the planets are or their functions? some of them
*Do you know what the houses are or their functions? yes they are real day to day life arenas where everything plays out - i have a problem with the 12th house though - not clear what that really means
*Do you know what a rising sign is or its functions? not really though my one holds me back virgo in general but its good when i put it to use and simplify my life/organise it

I came up with these questions because I thought that they were the "basics" for a beginner to know before they could make an accurate judgment about believing in astrology or not. Basically, a person should not make the decision that they can believe in it unless they have covered the basics and know a little bit how the system works.

I'll post some of the statistics I come up with a little later and leave this open to general discussion, if any.

Click to expand...

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No need to fill out the survey star lover, I'm already done surveying Thank you anyway though.

I opened this thread so once I posted the stats we could look at them and comment.

oops lol -look forward to results

Ok I finally finished typing up my very rough draft. Mind everyone that I have not put any analysis in it (or very little at least) as I will be doing that later.

NOTE before you read essay: belief correlation refers to a number scale of 1-10 of their "expression of belief"; attributes to the sign refers to the participant correctly naming an attribute for their sign; the recall is self explanatory; the use of astrology on a daily basis is when the participant writes down the signs they feel they are compatible with/avoid/favor/ and notice a predominance of, denoted as C.A.F.P.;knowledge of the subject is a section of five questions of if they know what the sun sign is/moon sign is/houses are/ planets are/ or ascendant is.

Enjoy

[size=+3]"[/size] For the purpose of analysis, the survey will be divided into five parts and statistics will be given for each, along with an analysis. The first part will be the belief correlation, the second part will be the attributes to the sign, the third part will be the recall of astrological signs, the fourth the use of astrology on a daily basis (C.A.F.P. as mentioned above), and the fifth the knowledge of the subject.

For the gender study of the survey, women showed higher numbers of knowledge and belief of the subject. On the belief scale, ninety two percent of the women marked at most an ‘8', sixty four percent marked at most a ‘5', and twenty nine percent marked at most a ‘2’. In comparison, one hundred percent of the men marked an ‘8' at most, ninety two percent marked at or below a ‘5', and fifty percent marked below a ‘2'. This is a large difference, showing the fifty percent mark for men at ‘2' and for women at approximately‘4.75’, almost three points above men out of only ten. For correct attributes of their “sun sign”, seventeen percent could name some correct attribute, while fifty percent of women could. This thirty three percent difference is a large percentage, especially if most men have below a twenty percent belief rate. Women also take the upper hand in naming more astrological signs than men do, seventy two percent of women name at least half, while ninety two percent of men can only name half. Sixty four percent of women sufficiently answered the C.A.F.P. section, while only thirty three percent of the men did so. For the knowledge part of the survey, zero percent of the men satisfactorily answered the question, while seventeen percent of the women did so.

For the ethnic correlation of the research, Caucasians showed the highest belief, while it descended to Asian, African American, and finally Hispanic with the lowest belief. Ninety five percent of Caucasians marked below ‘8', as compared to one hundred percent of Asians marking ‘5' as their highest, sixty seven percent of African Americans marking ‘2' as their highest, and one hundred percent of Hispanics marking ‘2' as their highest. In the questions regarding attributions, sixty seven percent of Caucasians did not satisfactorily write correct attributions, sixty seven percent of African Americans did not satisfactorily write correct attributions, and one hundred percent of Asians and Hispanics did not satisfactorily write down correct attributions. Seventy eight percent of Caucasians could name at least half of the astrological signs, while one hundred percent of Asians could not name any. One hundred percent of Hispanic participant could name nine signs, but this is biased as there was only one Hispanic participant. One hundred percent of African Americans could name at most three signs. In the C.A.F.P. section, sixty one percent of Caucasians, thirty three percent of African Americans, zero percent of Hispanics and Asians satisfactorily answered any of the four questions. Finally, only eleven percent of Caucasians answered the knowledge section sufficiently; every other group did not.

The last part of the research investigated the religious affiliation and its correlation to belief and knowledge of the subject of astrology. Forty two percent of unaffiliated participants chose ‘3' or below in the belief section, while seventy five percent of Christians chose the same number, as did sixty percent of Catholics and sixty six percent of those under “other.” Oddly however, more Catholics wrote correct attributes to their sun sign with forty three percent unaffiliated participants satisfactorily answering the question and eighty percent of Catholics satisfactorily answering the same question. This was not true for the other categories as twenty five percent of Christians and zero percent of those under “other” wrote correct attributes. In a similar case, one hundred percent of Catholics could name at least six of the twelve zodiac signs, while only seventy nine percent of the unaffiliated group could. Seventy five percent of Christians and sixty seven percent of “other” also named at least six of the twelve signs. In the C.A.F.P. section, fifty percent of unaffiliated, fifty percent of Christian and Catholic, and thirty three percent of “other” satisfactorily answered. The final part was a dismal, yet more reasonable statistic. Only fourteen percent of unaffiliated religious choice had any knowledge of the subject of astrology, and none of the other three religious choices had any knowledge at all of the subject.[size=+3]"[/size]

I'm wondering who did the survey and how many?

Those are interesting statistics. Some to be expected, but some were a suprise to me.

I should mention that I did the survey! Don't take this as entire truth though! I did this survey in one of the Dining Commons at my university during lunch so it would probably best describe ethnic, gender, and religious correlations for the same age.

If I had more time, I probably would've done 50 instead of only 26 and in a public area so I could factor in a fourth test of age correlation.

Just thought these limited statistics would be of some interest. I'm still not done with the report yet, so I have yet to add some of the comments people made....

rainwolf said:

I should mention that I did the survey!

Click to expand...

Well I assumed that I meant who were the people you surveyed, I just used very bad english to ask it But good to know it was uni students. I'd love to see how the test would compare to statistics from a retirement home, to see how our views have changed in the last 50 years.

Could also shed some light on how newspaper horoscopes have affected the understanding and knowledge of astrology. Maybe next semester heh?

Oh god I dont want to do another paper >.<

I managed to pick all the students sitting alone that were too afraid to say no to me

hehehe So we have a survey of the lonely and bashful I hope you at least bought them lunch and asked then how their day was going first

As to not wanting to do anymore papers.... Um you may want to look up the world "college"

The gender differences you found would be expected, and perhaps exaggerated in a younger population. I was suprised at the lesser knowledge among Asians. Did you restrict your questioning to western astrology? My experience with my friends is Chinese Astrology is extremely well accepted and known. Perhaps this is due to the small sample group, or geography. Is there a strong Chinese community in your area?

It was interesting that Catholics had comparably better knowledge than others, even from within the Christian faiths, despite little belief.

Have you made graphs/tables of your statistics? If so and they are postable I'd love to see them. Statistics in a paragraph make my head hurt