Last week’s fieldwork trip to Palermo was a testing time in
more ways than one but overall a definite success.
Network and/or software problems meant we struggled to
complete the first day of data collection but sterling work by Marika and
Leonardo meant that we managed to run three rounds of ‘Step One’ instead of two
and at least give ourselves a chance of making up the lost ground. Big thanks
must also go to Martin ‘Albert’ Hall for getting up at 4:30 am to reconstruct
the databases in time for us to carry on with ‘Step Two’ as planned. After
that, things went much more smoothly: recruitment picked up and we managed to
collect all the remaining data as planned. In the end, we even finished
slightly ahead of schedule.
Palermo also saw a new variation of the IMGAME method, in
which Pretenders at Step Two answered two sets of questions rather than just
one. This should give a measure of ‘Pretender noise’ and will allow us to
explore the reliability of IMGAME data in a different way. We will, of course,
also compare the results from Palermo, in which non-Christians pretended to be
Catholics, with the results from Budapest and Cardiff, where we researched the
same topics.
As ever, I must end by thanking our Local Organiser Marika
for all her hard work. In this case, she had the unenviable task of finding atheists
in Italy, dealing with computer problems on the first day and looking after
Harry, Martin and me for a whole week. She did all this superbly and will be
delighted to know that we fully intend to come back next year!J.
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