Gen Y research
I was on a panel at Greenbelt about new spirituality and mission. A question was asked about a piece of research called Generation Y that looks at the world view of 15-25 year olds. Well, I wasn’t too complementary about the research, but i have to confess that at the time I hadn’t read it fully, so I thought that I’d read it and make a more informed response.
I think that is an interesting piece of research but have a number of problems with their methodology and also with the conclusions that Graham Cray draws from it. This piece of research has two elements to it, the first element is to interview 124 young people aged between 15-25 year olds to find out their world view. The second element of the research is to take a group of young people away, they then watch some films, show them images and watch soaps with them and from this draw out the key threads of their world view. This second element of the research is interesting and has some valuable insights within it, but it needs a lot more work before it can be considered a serious piece of research.
My methodological problem is that the research sample is too small and unrepresentative of 15-24 year. 124 is too small a sample to make it a piece of research that has long term value we need it to be about 1000 people. Also, 40% of these people are Christian and therefore the research is unrepresentative. The number of 15-25 currently going to church is less than 10% and therefore the number of people researched who are Christian should be no more than 13. Unfortunately this trebling of the christian representation will have massive implications on the results of the research. Thirdly, the research is conducted in universities, youth clubs and colleges again i would argue that the people who attend these three places do not represent the breadth of the 15-25 year olds in the UK.
The researchers verified their findings by talking to two Dj’s on the ‘cutting edge of youth culture’ – I’m sorry but this is not academic verification of results! They also visited a night club in order to gain a ‘taste of young peoples clubbing experience’. Unfortunately, by visiting a club you do not ‘gain a taste of young peoples clubbing experience’…you need to be part of the music, the scene, the culture…
My problems with Graham Cray’s conclusions is that they polarise. Cray uses the Heelas and Woodhead’s research into Kendal, ‘The Spirituality Revolution’ and says ‘If the new age niche is below 3 per cent actively participating each week, we do not yet have a spirituality revolution!’ Cray’s tone and style suggests that Heelas and Woodhead are claiming that we are in the midst of spirituality revolution when they actually state:
‘To summarize our findings concerning the situation in GB today around 4,600,000 are active in the congregational domain and around 900,000 in the holistic milieu. This means that the claim that there has been a spiritual revolution has been exaggerated.’
They do not claim that a spirituality revolution is going on but rather a number of mini-revolutions at a variety of different points and that in 40-50 years we may have seen a revolution…but not yet! Cray is not representing what the authors are saying. It seems to me that Cray has sparked a debate and taken the discussion about the research in a direction that is unhelpful.
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Although I haven’t read it, it also strikes me that to characterize the spiritual world view of a “generation” by sampling them at just one age is not going to yield lasting results anyway. It merely points to trends of that generation at that particular age. If you had done that to the boomers in 1968, they would have come out with an outlook which was very “spiritual” – characterized by the Summer of Love and the Beatles’ turn to Eastern mysticism. On the other hand, if you’d sampled them again in 1987, they’d have come out as “very materialistic” – characterized by Gecko in the film “Wall Street”. People change, and I think people’s spirituality changes with age. This also changes with the experiences of different generations. At the most, one can only spot very general trends which are constantly changing. So I’m sceptical of anything which characterises Generation X as “spiritual” and Generation Y as “materialistic” – it’s a huge oversimplification to the point of being meaningless.
I agree with all that’s been said here about statistics, sampling etc. But the bigger problem for me is that the definitions of what it means to be spiritual (by which young people’s spirituality or lack of it are tested) are very limited, and reflect an almost exclusively dualistic view that ignores the more integrated understanding of spirituality that (in my experience) young people are looking for. If you define being spiritual in terms that seem to be derived from a charismatic Christian view, then of course you will conclude that the majority of kids are ‘unspiritual’ – but by the same standard, most of their parents would be as well, not to mention a fair number of card-carrying Christians. There are too many assumptions about what ‘spirituality’ is for my liking, and conversely therefore too little real listening to the spiritual heartbeat of today’s gen Y (not that I think these definitions are much use either – but that’s another story).