9. The new questions in the 2003 questionnaire schedule: the power of prayer; feelings about the Zoroastrian religion and community; Zoroastrian values compared with European values; Zoroastrian purity laws

In Research Paper 2003 survey of Zoroastrians in Europe

New questions were asked in the 2003 questionnaire because of questions arising from a statistical analysis of the data relating to the symbolic boundaries of Zoroastrianism from the 1985 survey. The new questions concerned with the purity laws, feelings about Zoroastrianism and Zoroastrian values compared with European values. Also, a new question was added about the power of prayer, because in the previous two surveys only the question ‘Do you pray’ had been asked and it was considered to be important to know what the respondents felt about prayer and what prayers they used.

Table 9a

9a. The Power of Prayer

This question generated a lot of interesting material in terms of how many respondents affirmed that prayer was powerful, 69%, 203 men and 79%, 237, women.

It also generated a variable in the 2003 data set about the categories of the power of prayer from miraculous to powerful.

Table 9a1

Table 9a2

The prayers that the respondents affirmed were powerful are listed, but note that the spellings are exactly as the respondent wrote them in the questionnaire, see Table 9a 3.