Devil's Music: Survey

This is the third installment in a series I'll be presenting over the next several blog posts regarding the research I've been working on with several students that we'll be presenting soon at Southerns.

We conducted a web-based survey of students at a small(er) liberal arts college in the rural southern United States. The sample was drawn from undergraduates enrolled in the spring of 2013 as well as frosh enrolled in the fall of 2013. The survey was open from 19 November 2013 to 26 December 2013. The response rate was 22% (n=301). Here are the descriptive statistics:

Here is the parsimonious regression model and resulting predicted values for fans of Contemporary Christian acts:

Here is the parsimonious regression model and resulting predicted values for fans of Christian metal bands:

Here are some takeaway points:

• On average, students identified just fewer than four out of twenty-two (16%) popular Contemporary Christian acts (CC's) of which they were fans.
• 57% of the students were fans of at least one of the CC's listed.
• On average, students identified fewer than one out of nine (5%) Christian metal bands (CM's) of which they were fans.
• 17% of the students were fans of at least one of the CM's listed.
• There is no correlation between the count of CC's and the count of CM's.
• In other words, there is no significant overlap between these scenes.
• Neither race nor any of the socioeconomic measures are predictive of the count of either CC's or CM's.
• Regarding CC's:
• Those who are self-report as more conservative tend to like more acts.
• Women tend to like more acts than men.
• Regarding CM's:
• Those who are older tend to like more bands.
• Those who attend live music performances at least once a year tend to like more bands.
• Gender is not predictive of the count of bands.
• In other words, we don't have evidence that this is a guy's thing.
• While being a fan of Contemporary Christian acts is correlated with several measures of religion (i.e. self-reporting as very religious, attending religious services at least once a week, and being Evangelical Protestant), being a fan of Christian metal bands is not.
• In fact, being a fan of Christian Metal bands is mostly about being a fan of metal music in general.