YouGov has pulled a study suggesting that a “quiet revival” was taking place among young people in the United Kingdom. Upon re-analyzing its data, the organization found the study was unreliable.” A number of survey respondents were discovered to be “fraudulent.”
“YouGov takes full responsibility for the outputs of the original 2024 research, and we apologise for what has happened,” YouGov CEO Stephan Shakespeare said in a statement. “We would like to stress that Bible Society has at all times accurately and responsibly reported the data we supplied to them. We are running the survey again with Bible Society to get robust data on this topic.”
The organization noted that upon the report’s initial media interest, the research team “went back to the data and found no methodological issues at that time.”
Bible Society CEO Paul Williams called the news “discouraging” and voiced that he is “deeply disappointed.”
“Over a 15-month period, Bible Society repeatedly sought and received assurances from YouGov, regarding both the robustness of the methodology and the reliability of the report’s conclusions,” Williams explained. “It was only at the beginning of March that YouGov confirmed that it failed to activate key quality control technologies that protect the sample from a wide range of errors and this undermines the reliability of the results.”
Williams still expressed an optimism for Britain’s spiritual landscape, noting, “While religious identity overall is shifting from ‘Christian’ to ‘no religion’, Christianity in Britain appears to be moving from a declining nominal faith to a committed and active one, as cultural shifts – especially among younger people – encourage a more proactive search for identity, meaning and purpose.”
According to the “Quiet Revival” report, church attendance rose from 4% to 16% among those aged 18-24 between 2018 and 2024.
