Research

Evaluating Generalizations

In the field of early Chinese studies, one will run across claims such as the following: "It is generally agreed that mind-body or spirit-body dualism is completely unknown in early China"; sometimes the claim will be much broader, that this sort of dualism is completely unknown outside of the Abrahamic faiths.

A quick Visualize query for the Religious Group poll question, "Is a spirit-body distinction present," gives the following results:

https://religiondatabase.org/visualize/267/.

In fact, spirit-body dualism seems to characterize the vast majority of Religious Groups entered into the DRH, even in East Asia. Until contributing to the DRH becomes a more normative activity for scholars of religion, such results will only reflect the views of a sub-portion of the field, but eventually queries such as this will allow one to instantly and accurately get a sense of the general consensus (or lack thereof) on any given question in the field.

For those dubious about categoric "Yes/No/Field Doesn't Know/I Don't Know" answers, the Table view allows you to instead simply browse experts' qualitative comments on a topic. In this way, DRH search results function as a quick encyclopedic survey of experts' views on a given question.

Quantifiable Analysis

Approved analysts can download a csv file of existing DRH data and explore data relationships using their own analytic software. For approval, please contact the Managing Editor at project.manager@religiondatabase.org

In the near future, we are planning an Analyze function that will allow multiple types of statistical analysis to be performed on the DRH site itself.