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?

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Comments

• Posted by FionaB on November 18, 2009

  *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….

• Posted by Sharon on November 18, 2009

  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

• Posted by jgharston on November 19, 2009

  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.