Scottish Catholic Observer

Glasgow University’s Professor Stephen McKinney this week defended his research titled ‘Assessing sectarian attitudes among Catholic adolescents in Scotland’ and criticised the national newspapers that ran stories on the research with headlines such as ‘Third of Catholic school pupils lack Protestant friends.’

The research surveyed a ‘small sample’ of pupils from Catholic schools in Scotland and within the findings it was stated that ‘although only 6per cent of Catholic pupils took the extreme view that they would not like to live next door to Protestants, fewer than one third of Catholic pupils affirm their positive experience of Protestants.’

However, the research also found that ‘religious engagement among Catholic pupils is a significant predictor of lower levels of sectarian attitudes’ and that ‘Catholic pupils least likely to espouse sectarian attitudes are those who regard their religious identity as important, attend Mass frequently and pray frequently.’

Journal

The research was published on a closed online journal that ‘had a pay wall’ was part of a ‘bigger project’ according to McKinney who carried out the work with fellow academics Professor Leslie Francis and Ursula McKenna.

Professor Stephen McKinney said: “I comment on behalf of Professor Francis and Dr. McKenna to point out that it is disappointing that some of the very positive findings of the research have been completely ignored in the recent publicity. These relate to the levels of religiosity in the sample of self-identified Catholic pupils. These we found to be encouraging and important indicators of the scope for future research.”

Professor Stephen McKinney added that publicity in national newspapers was done ‘without our knowledge and without our participation.’

Professor McKinney insisted the findings published were drawn from a ‘much wider research project’ that took place across the whole of the UK and focused on ‘Young People’s Attitudes towards Religious Diversity.’

Dataset

McKinney added that ‘from the original research many publications have been generated’ including the latest one, which sampled 797 pupils aged between 13-15 from no more than four Catholic schools across the Central belt.

Professor McKinney said: “We have been careful in the article to qualify the claims made and to set them within the constraints of an empirical study of this nature. We point out that, while the sample was drawn from data from schools across Scotland, the number of participants is quite small.

“We have pointed out the data was drawn from a very specific age range and this limits the claims that can be made. We argue that we would need to ask more questions in a wider, deeper research project. Some of the questions that were asked have been taken out of context as they are part of a long series of questions that are standard social proximity questions. These were asked about different religions and not simply Christian denominations.”

The three academics are scheduled to present the research to an ‘expert international academic audience’ in July 2020, in order to provide them with feedback, advice from their peers and the ways they can refine it and take it forward.

Disruption

However, Professor McKinney added that process had been ‘disrupted’ due to the publication of the research in titles such as The Sunday Times, Daily Mail, The Scottish Sun and The Herald.

“While academics do have a responsibility to disseminate the findings of their research to a wider audience there are certain points when this is appropriate and certain points when the research is not yet ready to be shared more widely,” said McKinney. “This is the nature of academic process. In this case the process has been disrupted.”

The Catholic Church was not made aware of the research before it was published and criticised the methodology of the research in the secular press.

Church response

A spokesman for the Catholic Church said: “Unsurprisingly, there is no evidence to support the theory that Catholic schools contribute to the formation of sectarian attitudes.

“A wider, fuller study encompassing children from all faiths and non with a far more robust methodology could still offer an interesting insight into the nascent attitudes of the next generation towards religious tolerance. Such a study might offer wider society food for thought, in a way that this study, has sadly failed to do.”