About the Principal Researcher

Christopher F Silver served as board member of the Chattanooga Free Thought Association for 2 years. He currently served as the public relations co-chair for the Chattanooga Free Thought Association. He has assisted in organizing and scheduling speakers for Skeptics in the Pub, a lecture and debate series in Chattanooga. Mr. Silver also serves as the faculty advisor to the UTC Secular Student Alliance. Mr. Silver’s research has focused on a variety of topics including religious deconversion, spirituality, new religious movements, and research theory. He has co-authored a variety of academic publications and has served as a speaker for different types of groups. He is currently completing his doctoral degree in learning and leadership from the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga where he teaches psychology courses in research methods and tests and measurements.

Studying Non-Belief

UPDATED AS OF FEB 2nd 2013!!!!

OUR SURVEY IS NOW LIVE!!!! See Below.

Greetings

You have been directed to this page based on interest in a study of non-belief hosted at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga (UTC). The principal researcher Christopher Silver, faculty of psychology and dissertation student at UTC is seeking to understand more about non-belief and the complexities of individuals who may call themselves agnostic or atheists.

As an insider, Chris Silver has observed from preliminary research that social science studies of non-belief and atheism make general assumptions which may not be grounded in the real experience and identity of those who identify as agnostic or atheist. In some cases, these studies make overarching assumptions (minimalist in nature) that all agnostics or atheists are the same. Moreover such assumptions assert that these groups may have psychological implications to their identity. Chris would assert this is not the case however further research must be conducted to show the complexity of demographics which exist within the non-belief community. Therefore we are reaching out to connect with people of different backgrounds and locations within the United States. We would like to ask for your assistance in not only participating but also helping us locate potential participants with varying perspectives on non-belief. We hope we can find people who self-describe as atheist or agnostic but with varying degrees of participation in non-belief advocacy groups. This includes people who associate with freethinker and advocacy groups such as American atheists to individuals who believe their non-belief is a personal position and need not be shared with others.

What is involved?

We are looking for people who consider themselves Atheists, Agnostics, and Non-religious participants

Our interviews are still underway!! For those of you who agreed to participate but have not yet heard from us, please be patient. We will contact you soon.

 

Our Survey is now live!!!!!

 

Link to the survey is here or

 

https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/C9WZ73J

if you need to copy and paste into your browser.

Greetings, thank you for your interest in our research. We wanted to give you a short introduction regarding what we are trying to accomplish. The study includes 305 questions regarding your life, feelings, and experience. This study uses a variety of scales and questionnaires related to personality, human experience, and emotion. The reason for such a large questionnaire is that non-belief is a relative new field of study and to be fair to the complexity of human experience and to your experience, we wanted to explore the various types of people who call themselves non-believers (in whatever adjective they might use). As you may or may not be aware, there have not been many honest efforts in studying non-belief or in this case the non-religious, agnostics or atheists Americans.

For those studies that have been conducted, they have been limited in scope, description, and exploration of what people believe, or don’t believe. This study will attempt to be an honest conceded effort to study the fastest growing minority within America. Many of our questions in the demographic sections including the typology section were taken from actual interviews conducted with non-believers from around the country. Many of these people are lifelong atheists to recently self-described agnostics. The survey takes about 30 minutes to an hour to complete depending on how quickly you respond to items. We would ask that you complete the whole survey so we can get a much fuller picture of your life experience. These results will be collected in mass and compared through statistics to look for social trends related to American non-belief. The funds in support of this project come from students pockets. These students are dedicated to the empirical exploration of this topic. The Principal investigator and project manager are members of their local Free Thought Association and are the ones leading this investigative effort.

We would ask for your support in our research by completing this survey. If you have any questions, please email the principal investigator Christopher F Silver at Christopher-Silver@utc.edu. Thank you again for your time and potential participation.

 

The Institutional Review Board of the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga (FWA00004149) has approved this research project #12-176.