And here's another question: Say ya'll have convinced me that the faith IS the problem? What do we do about it? Just outlaw it? Go to war to eradicate it? Go on a conversion crusade?
You'll have to make a convincing argument that any given poll you're using (a) is reliable and valid--from a psychometrics/measurement perspective, and (b) is externally valid..that is, some explanation of how the sample accurately generalizes to the population.
Deus vult.
When you see several polls reaching similar conclusions, that builds a consensus.
Of course it does. And that consensus has to be grounded, first, in reliability and validity...otherwise it means nothing.
Also, that "consensus" must necessarily include all polls, especially the ones that have findings that oppose the ones you're looking for. Did you find any of those?
...which means absolutely nothing. Sampling bias is an obvious source of error here. How were the polled samples selected? Without an answer to that (among other questions), the polls mean nothing. How, exactly, were the questions phrased (and, since you're reading it in English, how good is the translation)? You can make a poll give any result you want through selection bias and careful phrasing of the question (and, again, translation can make the question seem entirely different; translation rarely works with mathematical precision).
in other words...reliability and validity!
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