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To: xzins
Some independent churches are 10 people and a wood stove for heat. If one screws up, then you can claim a 10% rate.

My point exactly. And the related point was "should denominational ratios be skewed by independent ratios?"

Since, however, arminian-like Christianity is far larger than is reformed-like Christianity, one must speak of rates and not of numbers of cases. So long as that is what your stats do, I’m fine with it to a degree.

That is indeed what my stats attempt to do. AFAIK, no one has ever attempted to quantify abuse statistics to show where abuse runs high (or low) among Protestant, Evangelical, and Independent church leadership. My attempts appear to be the first. And I would agree with you that we should compare apples to apples by keeping it ratios to ratios, and not raw numbers to raw numbers. See especially the thread Teachers Vs. Priests - Unequal Treatment In the Media? in which I say

While 25,000 hypothesized "accusations" is roughly six times the number of Catholic "accusations", 25,000 cases out of 1,600,000 teachers gives us a 1.3 to 1.56% ratio of sexually abusive teachers out of the entire public school system over a fifty year period - more than twice the volume of Protestant pastoral abuse, and less than half the volume of Catholic priest abuse.

If we're after equal treatment in the media, I would expect there to be at least double the number of Catholic news stories as Public School stories, and four times as many Catholic news stories as Protestant news stories based on the percentage of perverts that exist with their respective organizations. IMO the disproportionate amount of coverage is the result of increased interest, when those organizations are caught protecting the abusers at the expense of the victims.


16 posted on 04/02/2008 8:08:51 AM PDT by Alex Murphy ("Am I therefore become your enemy, because I tell you the truth?" -- Galatians 4:16)
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To: Alex Murphy

Based on your response, I support your research and your efforts.

My only caution statistically would be any type of peculiarity that might actually be the source of differences. One would have to eliminate income level, education, region, etc. as influencing/determining factors.

If, for example, one region of the nation was dominant in prevalence of sexual abuse, but also had a limited number of available denominations, then that would tend to skew numbers against those denominations.


18 posted on 04/02/2008 8:16:25 AM PDT by xzins (Retired Army Chaplain -- Those denying the War was Necessary Do NOT Support the Troops!)
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