The Face-to-Face Survey of Zoroastrians in Britain 1987 - part 1
‘The Face-to-Face Survey of Zoroastrians in Britain 1987’ was conducted by Dr Rashna Writer. For Dr Writer’s interpretation of the survey see her book ‘Contemporary Zoroastrians: An Unstructured Nation’. The following data analyses were conducted independently with permission from Dr Writer who bears no responsibility whatsoever for this analysis, from coding the responses to the questionnaires and transferring them to a computer so that they could be analysed by the statistical program SPSS.
The data set consisted of 232 respondents, of whom 106 were male and 126 were female. Their ages ranged from 16 to 84 with forty one percent under 30 years old and eighty-six percent under 60 years old. The majority lived in the London area and all but twenty-three percent were born outside the UK. Fifty-five percent were or had been married, with thirty-two percent having non-Zoroastrian partners. English was the first language of sixty-one percent of the respondents and sixty-six percent were educated beyond secondary school level, with twenty-two percent in professional occupations.
Nine attitudinal variables were developed from the questionnaire schedule.
Cultural Conflict;
Ethnic Identity;
Religious Identity;
Symbolic Boundaries;
Attitudes to Outsiders;
Attitudes to Insiders;
Perceived Racial Prejudice;
Symbolic Boundaries and Race;
Religious Knowledge
The Appendix lists how these variables were built up from the data set ‘The Face-to-Face Survey of Zoroastrians in Britain 1987’. Also, a detailed account of how the statistical analysis was conducted.
The attitudes to be analysed, as far as this data analysis was concerned, were those
a. Who said that they had social identities
b. Who supported maintaining the symbolic boundaries
c. Who said that they had problems with outsiders
d. Who said that there were no problems between Parsis and Iranis
e. Who thought that the close connection between symbolic boundaries and race should be kept
f. Who had knowledge of their religion
Table 1 shows the correlation of the attitudinal variables (YES responses) with each other.
There is a positive correlation between admitting to Cultural Conflict and Perceived Racial Prejudice. Those Zoroastrians who admit to an Ethnic Identity have a high Religious Identity and Religious Knowledge. For those with a Religious Identity there is a correlation with Religious Knowledge. The negative correlation between Symbolic Boundaries and Religious Identity suggests that the more positive the religious identity of the respondent the more likely they are to be in favour of keeping the symbolic boundaries closed. Also, Religious Identity is associated with perceiving differences between Parsis and Iranis, Attitudes to Insiders. However, the positive correlation between Ethnic Identity, Religious Identity, and Religious Knowledge implies the more positive the religious and ethnic identity the higher the religious knowledge. Similarly the higher the feeling of cultural conflict, the more likely the respondent admits to perceived racial prejudice.
Table 2 shows that when the Zoroastrians who said NO to the questions comprising the attitudinal variables, the above associations were found for the correlation of the attitudinal variables (NO responses) with each other. (The variable Attitudes to Insiders could not be used because there was only one category that of the respondents agreeing that there were differences between Parsis and Iranis). The positive correlation between Symbolic Boundaries and Race and Ethnic Identity suggests that the less positive the ethnic identity of the respondent, the less likely they will to be in favour of keeping the close connection between symbolic boundaries and race. Similarly, the positive correlation between Religious Identity and Attitudes to Outsiders implies the lower the religious identity, of the respondent the more likely the positive response to outsiders. The negative correlations of Symbolic Boundaries with Symbolic Boundaries & Race and Religious Identity suggests that those respondents with a low religious identity, or who do not want to keep the association between group boundaries and race, will be in favour of opening up the Zoroastrian Community symbolic boundaries.