“Thanks for doing this survey for us ex SDA. It is a rarity, never done anything like it, so specific, before.”

-male, Millennial, Ex-Adventist

Some preliminary data

‘Data teasers’
We opened the survey nearly two weeks ago on March 1 and are both pleased and thankful that so many ex-SDA folks have responded. Our research team was recently interviewed by Santiago, host of Haystacks & Hell, and we had the opportunity to provide some deep background behind our survey. We are happy that our modest efforts have generated some interest among ex-SDA people and that the survey is providing a cathartic experience for many.

Below are some ‘data teasers’, very preliminary results and comment on same. Enjoy!

Remarkable response rate
As of this writing (3-12-23) we have 336 responses to our survey with a remarkably high 100% completion rate. That means every person who started the survey made it all the way to the end, pressing the final ‘submit’ button. This rarely happens in online survey research and in this case likely means a highly motivated population of respondents. This interpretation is supported by many responses to Q62 “Please add any final thoughts about the survey, any of the questions we asked, or anything you think may be useful to our research team.” One respondent commented,

“Thank you for doing this work, sorry for the trauma dump but I think the data is worth sharing cos I know I’m not alone.”

The mean time spent taking the survey is almost 34 minutes and an unusually high number of respondents are making comments, sometimes 100 words or more. Every possible indicator tells us that those responding to the survey are deeply engaged and committed to sharing their stories.

So, who’s responding to this survey? Question 1 asks, “What is your current relationship to Seventh-day Adventism?” The results thus far indicate the vast majority (88%) are indeed ‘Ex-Adventists” with a small but significant minority being physically in but mentally out (PIMO), i.e., “Non-Believing Adventists.” Over 91% of our respondents report they were born into Adventism.

Two word clouds
A word cloud is a visual representation of text data and the importance of each is shown with font size. Words that appear more often in the collective responses are bigger and help identify the focus of written material.

Q51 asked, “On balance, how do you now view your decision to leave Adventism? Good decision? Poor decision? Made at the right time?” Here is a representation of the 309 narrative responses thus far.

Q52 asked, “If you were to advise someone struggling with the decision to leave Adventism, what would you say to them?”  Collectively, 297 respondents said this.

 

Having read through all of the comments that went into both word clouds above I can report that the two messages, “good decision’ and ‘leave’ were amply and repeatedly stressed by the respondents. Here are three examples from Q51.

“It was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made in my life and wish I had made it sooner.”

“Great decision. I feel bad for people my age who still believe in it and are trapped in Adventism. I even wonder how in the world they still believe this baloney, with all the information out there on the Internet.”

“Excellent. The sooner the better.”

And now three examples from Q52.

“That leaving would give them a sense of overall peace and advise them to find other friends/support outside of the church.”

“That if they want to leave DON’T stay there just to please parents or by fear of family rejection. That’s being a hostage. Inner damage has begun at that point, and it is better to reduce the impact as soon as possible by leaving that place.”

“Leave. Run like the wind.”

Parsing through the data
The data so far provides a fairly clear picture of ex-SDA who have responded to the survey, and our job of parsing through all of the data has yet to begin; there is much to report. We will be keeping the survey open for a while but will not be able to avoid the temptation of sharing more ‘data teasers’ in the coming days and weeks. If there is a question that you would like to see the results for please let me know in the comments and I will respond with a post describing those data. In the meantime, please let us know if you have any feedback. I can be reached here or you can use this (ExSDA@proton.me) email as well.

Follow us on Instagram.

Follow us on Twitter.