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Reasons To Believe Home Page A big THANK YOU to the 500 of you who took the time and care to return the readership survey included last issue. Some of your responses confirmed our hunches; others took us by surprise. All were helpful in shaping our publication plans. We hope you will notice that some of the changes you suggested have already been incorporated, such as the revamping of our calendar and field report.
Among our regular columns, "Science in the News" draws the highest readership. Some 90 percent of respondents indicate that they "always" read that column, and another 9 percent "usually" read it. Second, third, and fourth most popular columns are "Let Us Reason," "As I See It," and "President’s Desk," in that order. These results we anticipated, but we did not anticipate that 83 percent of our readers "always" or "usually" read the resources section. We had planned to drop it, but you changed our minds, and we will consider it a review (rather than a sales) section.
"Puzzles and Paradoxes" and "Kids Space" are the least read columns, with 75 percent and 57 percent, respectively in the "always" and "usually" categories. With similar percentages of readers asking for more "Science in the News" space, we’ll probably do some trimming here. The kids’ column will be redirected toward young people in their teens and early twenties. We hope to provide material that is faith-building for this particular audience and helpful to those involved in nurturing the faith of young people.
Nearly two-thirds of survey respondents want six (or more) issues of Facts & Faith per year, and this request has become our goal. As God enables us — with both staff and finances — we will begin publishing bi-monthly sometime in 1997.
More than fifty respondents filled in the survey’s comments section. Some expressed exuberant praise, and some offered suggestions for improvement. One individual asks that we find a way to publish more cheaply and distribute more widely for evangelistic purposes, and we are looking into this possibility. Even the criticisms are helpful to us. One reader finds Hugh Ross, "boring" and asks for more "plain folks’ talk," and another exhorts us to leave science ("man’s thinking") alone to preach Christ. Just for the record, RTB’s guiding purpose is to exalt our Lord and Savior, Jesus. In our perspective, to affirm the truth of His Word, the Bible, by exploring and declaring (to the best of our limited abilities) His supernatural imprint on every detail of the creation seems consistent with this purpose. But we will look for ways to make the link clearer.
If you’d like to see where you fit among others on our mailing list, here are the demographics we collected from survey respondents:
0% |
16 - 25 4% |
26 - 35 13% |
36 - 45 22% |
46 - 55 22% |
22% |
66+ 17% |
|
| schooling completed |
7% |
23% |
bachelor’s 32% |
master’s 24% |
doctorate 13% |
||
| discovered RTB via |
television 45% |
radio 10% |
outreach 9% |
fam/friends 17% |
book 8% |
F&F 4% |
other 7% |
I admit it. I blew it. Thanks for letting me know that the astronomy activities presented in the last two issues were too complicated. One of us at RTB has difficulty believing that the things he did as a kid aren’t the things all other kids did and still like to do. I think he’s beginning to get the message. I want to apologize for any exasperation we may have caused you. Because of what we learned from our readers’ survey last issue, this column will be changing, perhaps to address the questions and concerns of the teens in our audience. If you are a high school aged reader (or slightly younger or older) and you’d like to submit a comment or question or even a title for this new column, please write me, Kathy Ross, at Reasons To Believe, P.O. Box 5978, Pasadena, CA 91117, or leave a message at (626) 335-1480. I look forward to hearing from you.
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Facts & Faith, Fourth Quarter 1996 Issue