Joker 10..You should learn to do math,before you attempt to teach it..LOL!!..........You should apply for a job at Bethel..They could use someone with your skills..
...OUTLAW
Witnesses increase by 44% in 7 years Study Finds: 2001-2008
by Joker10 59 Replies latest jw friends
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OUTLAW
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Big Tex
After years of seeing poor spelling from Witnesses on this board and elsewhere, I'm not terribly surprised to see basic math skills are the same.
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slimboyfat
There is a brand new study of Witness growth in the Festschrift for James Beckford who wrote the ground breaking study of Jehovah's Witnesses The Trumpet of Prophecy back in the 1970s. It was written by British sociologist David Voas: 'The Trumpet Sounds Retreat: Learning from the Jehovah's Witnesses'. It seems he sets out to correct the argument for Witness growth made by Rodney Stark in his article, 'Why the Jehovah's Witnesses grow so rapidly'.
I was thinking of buying the book just to read this article. It looks very interesting. And I have been impressed by David Voas' other work on secularisation.
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still_in74
And weren't you the one criticizing the Pew poll, the one about how 63% of people raised as JWs eventually leave the organization, for having a "too small" polling sample?
Oh god I remember that thread! Can we please not do THAT again???
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OnTheWayOut
His name is Joker10. I saw flaws in what he said but perpetuated it. HA HA.
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Farkel
:They now make up 0.8 percent of the U.S. population.
Oh, my goodness. The other 99.92% of the US must be terrified then.
Farkel
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BurnTheShips
Jehovah's people have truly become a great nation.
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jws
From what I calculate, that's about a 2.16% increase/year. At that rate, in another 17 years (34 altogether), they'll have experienced 102% growth since 1991.
If this is from a survey, I would think the normal "publisher" count wouldn't apply. If somebody's DF'ed, but trying to get back and somebody calls to ask their religion, they'll say JW. So I can see how the numbers might be higher than publisher rates.
As for percentage of the population. According to the census bureau, the 2008 US population was estimated to be about 305,059,724. 1,191,400 would only be 0.63% of the population.
I don't see a 1991 population, but the 1990 population was 248,708,873. 1,331,000 JWs in 1991 would be 0.54% of the 1990 population. But, presumably the US population increased by 1991 so dividing 1,331,000 JWs by a larger number would be an even smaller percentage.
Still, if these totals are reliable, they grew. They grew as a percentage of the population too, which sucks.
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Quirky1
Is that based on the US or globally?
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Leolaia
First, let's be fair to Joker10 by checking out what the document actually has to say.
From Table 3 (p. 5) of the study:
1990: 1,381,000 0.787% of adult population (175,440,000)
2001: 1,331,000 0.639% of adult population (207,983,000)
2008: 1,914,000 0.838% of adult population (228,182,000)So indeed, there has been an increase of 27.8% from 1990, but all of that increase represents the gains since 2001 since there was a 3.6% decrease between 1990 and 2001. The increase from 2001 to 2008 is 30.4%, or 4.3% per year. That is higher than the 2.5% cited by Farkel, and quite a bit less than the 43.8% cited by Joker10. What the data shows is that JWs underwent some decline in the 1990s and now have recovered and made some modest gains since.
The 1990s decline is interesting because a similar decline does not appear in official WT statistics. It is worth considering how the two kinds of data measure the population differently. The ARIS figures measure the proportion of the U.S. adult population that self-identifies as JW. These are thus more inclusive than Watchtower statistics on active publishers, as they would represent those who had been disfellowshipped or who had once studied but never gotten baptized or those who were raised as JWs who stopped attending meetings but still believe, etc. The figures of memorial attendance (which are always bigger than the number of active publishers), thus is the more inclusive figure provided by the Society -- which would capture those "one-a-year" JWs (although it may be a little too inclusive, as it would include also those relatives who do not believe JW doctrine who get roped into the Memorial). They are however less inclusive than the Watchtower statistics because they omit underage people whereas the Watchtower Society counts all publishers regardless of age, and the memorial attendance figures count all present -- even young children. So the decline seen in the population measured by ARIS may not be detectable in the different population measured in official Watchtower statistics. There was no decline in the attendance figures in the 1990s and the memorial attendance dipped only a little in 1998 which would not have been visible in comparing the population of 1990 with that of 2001. So if the dip in the ARIS figures is not due to statistical error (depending on sample size and sampling bias), it would highlight one significant internal trend within JWs.....that while official membership did not decrease and memorial attendance was not lower in 2001 than in 1990, the proportion of adults self-identifying as JW declined in the 1990s. Quite possibly, it is the proportion of JW-identifying children active in the organization and attending the Memorial that prevented a decline from becoming manifest in the official statistics. That the decline has reversed itself would mean: 1) Many of these children have stayed with their beliefs and add themselves to the adult population in 2008 that self-identify themselves as JWs (regardless of whether they are still active as publishers), and/or 2) The JWs have had some recent success in gaining adult converts. Another factor is immigration -- do we know anything about the impact that Mexican-U.S. immigration has on the population of JWs? Not really. It is a major factor in the increase of Roman Catholics between 2001 and 2008. Although the proportion of JWs in the Mexican population is very small, the proportion of those immigrating has been significant and thus may constitute one contributor to JW increase. Do we know how many new Spanish congregations have arisen in the past decade?