Sacred & Profane Analysis

Well, I've started to tear into the data on my Sacred & Profane research and have discovered that I need to collapse some of the variables.

For example: Age.

I should have left this field open rather than creating artificial categories (18-20) for each respondent. That way if there were any noted patterns I could create them after they had responded as opposed to creating the category before hand.

It's not a real problem as I was mostly looking for any difference in the 'Traditional' versus 'Non-Traditional' age of the respondents. So, in collaboration with a colleague I've collapsed the ages into those two categories based on 18-20 and 21-22 (for Traditional) and 23+ (for Non-Traditional)

Age Ranges:

Traditional (52)
18-20: 24
21-22: 28

Non-Traditional (35)
23-24: 9
25-26: 10
27-28: 1
29-30: 2
31-32: 1
33-34: 4
41-45: 3
46-50: 5

I still want to discover if there are some basic correlations between my respondent's demographics and the elements that they were asked to define as either sacred or profane.

I'm also curious if Religious Observance (or attendance) has any impact on how often a subject reported a given element was either sacred or profane. I'm not sure if the respondent's religious affiliation (denomination, etc.) would have any impact.  Though a respondent may identify themselves as 'Christian'...I think they would be more 'spiritual' (and thus define more things as sacred) if they attend religious services more often.

I'll have to wait and see.

-Tom.