‘Quaker’: what does it mean to the outside world?

Geoffrey Durham explains how and why Quaker Quest has enlisted professional market research help to find out more about Quakers

I know all sorts of Quakers who know all sorts of things, but I’ve never met a single one who has a clue what the word ‘Quaker’ means to people who aren’t Quakers. I find it curious that we remain so ignorant. I hear stories every week of members of the public who think Quakers have died out, or that we are exclusively American, or that we wear black hats. There’s hearsay evidence that we are widely thought to be an occult society with funny handshakes. And what do we do to scotch such ideas? Very little, it seems to me. Can it really be that we aren’t interested in what people know about us? Do we think it doesn’t matter?

I often hear British Friends say, ‘When people are ready, they’ll find us’, but I wonder how likely they are to do that if they already think we’re strict evangelicals or not open to newcomers. And when we put a poster up outside the Meeting house to remind people that we’re here, we inevitably have to base it on guesswork. Because, self-evidently, if you don’t know how you’re perceived, you can’t possibly know if your message means anything to the people you want to reach.

I believe this is the right time to do a proper scientific survey of public perceptions of the Quakers, in order to discover what people know about our faith and what they don’t.

Three years ago I happened to meet a man who is a leading light in the specialised field of market research. David Smith is a past chair of the UK Market Research Society, director of the DVL Smith Group and professor of Market Research at the University of Hertfordshire Business School. I asked him if it might be possible to conduct a survey to find out something of how Quakers are perceived.

David replied that not only did he believe it entirely feasible to do a sensitive piece of research and the subsequent analysis involved, he was so interested in helping that he would be pleased to give his services pro bono. In other words, he offered to waive all his professional fees, leaving Friends to raise only the £6,000 required to pay a specialist organisation to undertake 1,000 interviews.

When Quaker Quest Network applied for funding to the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust for 2009-2011, we incorporated a request for an extra sum to be earmarked for the research. They agreed. We are very grateful. David Smith, together with a small Quaker Quest Network working party, designed the questionnaire during May and June 2009. The interviews were completed during the week of 15 June, and we eagerly await David’s analysis of the results when he publishes them on 20 November.

This is the first piece of robust national research into public perceptions of Quakers in living memory. Its quality control standards are rigorous and its scope is wide. We will discover how the public responded to suggestions, for example, that ‘Quakers are a closed group and do not allow people from the outside into their own community’, that ‘Quakers are a pacifist organisation’, that ‘Quakers are an old historical group that is no longer in existence’ – and much more. Crucially, there is an open question, with no prompting of any kind: ‘What comes to mind when you hear the word “Quakers”?’

I’m sure that what we discover will be fascinating. But it will also be of practical use to Friends everywhere. It will help us deal with enquirers on a Sunday morning, write the home page of our Area Meeting website and design a national poster for Quaker Week. We won’t have to guess any more.

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Comments

*Of course* it’s going to be oats, almost bound to be oats, in the context of market research. It’s probably what would come to *my* mind if asked by a market researcher that open question, because brands and branding are what comes to mind when you see someone with a clipboard and lots of shiny questions. Uxbridge seems to be a den of market researchers always ready to drag one into The Nave, the local church converted to cafe and community rooms, to ply the unsuspecting shopper with free pens, questions about fish fingers and execrable plastic cups of coffee. I’m very interested to know how people responded to the deeper questions, and what percentage had heard of us….

By FionaB on 18th November 2009 - 19:54

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A highly laudable activity. Even though its base will be English, it should benefit benefit Friends in the US very much. An earlier study done in England on the demographics of Friends meetings was very helpful to me when I was on New York Yearly Meeting’s Renewal Committee some years ago. Market research is like anything else—excellent to abominable. I trust you have an excellent resource. And Friends in the English-speaking world, at least, are highly suspicious of using such secular instruments. We really need, as international Friends, to do some kind of research on Alternatives to Violence programs. We know experientially how transformative they can be for the leader” as well as the “participant,” but it would be fine to be able to talk in secular language about “success” in order to examine the program more closely ourselves and to convince the bureaucrats to let us introduce AVP to more prisons. Sharon”

By Sharon on 18th November 2009 - 20:43

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It would be interesting if any geographical differences come out of the survey. If somebody asked me to name places with Quaker connections I’d say Bournville, York and Whitby. I wonder if it works the other way around.

By jgharston on 19th November 2009 - 14:53

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