Bishops’ Council for Research and Development conducts online survey on use of language

31 Oct 2007

PRESS RELEASE

31st October 2007

Bishops’ Council for Research and Development conducts online survey on use of language


Background

An online survey is being conducted by the Council for Research and Development, which is an agency of the Irish Catholic Bishops’ Conference. The purpose of the research is to explore how best to communicate the Catholic Church’s position on marriage and the family.

The survey is a data-gathering exercise on the subject of language use and concept formation amongst people in Ireland.

Online survey

The motivation for the survey is to find out what springs to mind when people think of, hear or read words in common usage in Ireland today. The names and contact details of respondents are not sought or required for the purposes of the survey.

Methodology

The survey is available for completion on the Bishops’ Conference website www.catholiccommunications.ie and consists of 15 questions which should take no more than 10 minutes to complete. The survey is open to anyone with internet access. The survey will be online for a two week period and its results will be made available subsequently.

Mr Eoin O’Mahony, Social Researcher with the Bishops’ Council for Research & Development compiled the survey questions. According to Eoin, “This is the first time that we have conducted a survey using an online facility and this reflects the target audience. Using online surveys as a method of gauging peoples’ opinion is a fast way to receive useful data. If this initiative proves to be successful, it would be our hope to use this model again in the future in order to appraise attitudes on other Church-related topics.”

ENDS

Further information:
Martin Long Director of Communications (086 172 7678)
Kathy Tynan Communications Officer (086 817 5674)