Las Vegas
Ron Niebrugge is an excellent photographer. I have not been to Las Vegas as of yet.
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! An issue came up through an email today which I had thought previously could arise. A person suggested in regard to the problem of evil questionnaire that I should not exclude persons that do not attend Christian churches, and that it would be useful to sample those who have different views other than Christian. My reply was that my University requires that I sample a certain group. My advisors have concluded that since I am writing within a Christian tradition I am to sample people that attend Christian churches. These churches would be defined as conservative and liberal, including Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox and Protestant. I do not doubt that if non-Christians are included that the survey results will be beneficial in a general sense. If I include for example those of other religions in my sample, along with atheists, agnostics, and deists, I will be sampling persons presumed to be outside of the influence of concepts reviewed within the theoretical work which covers theodicy (the problem of evil) from conservative and liberal Christian traditions. Therefore if I include sampled data from people that do not attend Christian churches, I cannot test my theoretical theodicy in regard to Christian practical theology and my dissertation will fail. An assumption being made is that people within Christian churches are being taught at least minimal aspects concerning concepts within theodicy I write about, and therefore I can test the philosophical, theological theory with the practical findings from the questionnaire. The same assumption cannot be made if I include persons that do not attend Christian churches, as it cannot be assumed that they are at least being taught minimal Christian theology by attending church.
Alan Bryman in his text Social Research Methods explains that a sample is a segment of the population that is selected for research. It is a subset of the population. Bryman (2004: 543). My subset for this PhD will be those that attend Christian churches.
BRYMAN, ALAN (2004) Social Research Methods, Oxford, University Press.
Russ:)
