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New Survey on LDS Gender Issues Piques Interest of Liberal, Conservative Mormons

Dan Bammes

  A group of academics from around the country is conducting an online survey to learn more about attitudes toward gender roles in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.  KUER’s Dan Bammes reports it’s drawing interest from both liberal and conservative Mormons.

The Mormon Gender Survey was launched over the weekend on social media. It’s not a standard random sample – anyone can choose to participate.

Kate Kelly, the founder of the group Ordain Women, has linked to the survey on her Facebook page and asked her supporters to state their views.  So has the group Mormon Women Stand, which takes a much more traditional view.

Amber Whiteley, a PhD student in psychology at the University of Utah, says that’s how their so-called “snowball” methodology is supposed to work.

“We’re really hoping that, from those two groups, that friends of friends of friends will continue to share it and that we’ll just get a wide range of everyone in between so that we’ll get an overall population representative of the entire church.”

The survey asks questions such as whether the respondents believe God has established different roles for men and women and how they might react if women were ordained to L-D-S priesthood leadership positions.

Conservative Mormon blogger Max Wilson writes Sixteen Small Stones. He says the questions themselves demonstrate bias, and he says the results of the survey will be used to “promote agitation” within the church.

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