I agree that it’s fine for the denomination question not to apply to non-religious people. I was just pointing out that we could, if we wanted, collect a little more information that way. (But at the cost of making interpretation slightly harder work, since as you say it would be potentially misleading to just count up answers to the denomination question without cross-referencing them against the religion question. The family-religion questions already have this problem, if problem it be.)
Splitting up the non-Christian religions is probably a good idea, though I have the feeling that “denomination” isn’t really the right term for many of the subdivisions you might want. E.g., you probably don’t want to split up Islam any further than Shia versus Sunni versus Other Muslim, but those would generally be called “branches” or something rather than “denominations”. This is all sheer nitpickery, of course :-).
Wikipedia calls the branches of Islam “Branches or Denominations” and the article on Judaism suggests Commonly used terms are movements, as well as denominations varieties, traditions, groupings, streams, branches, trends, and such.” Nitpickery appreciated, I’m currently happy with the divisions.
The family-religion question does have this issue. If I was going to change it, I’d change it to “What is your family’s religious background, as of when you were growing up?” That makes it fit the question above it, but risks making it harder to compare across years. I’m currently lightly leaning towards leaving it as-is, figuring the value of comparison is worth it.
I agree that it’s fine for the denomination question not to apply to non-religious people. I was just pointing out that we could, if we wanted, collect a little more information that way. (But at the cost of making interpretation slightly harder work, since as you say it would be potentially misleading to just count up answers to the denomination question without cross-referencing them against the religion question. The family-religion questions already have this problem, if problem it be.)
Splitting up the non-Christian religions is probably a good idea, though I have the feeling that “denomination” isn’t really the right term for many of the subdivisions you might want. E.g., you probably don’t want to split up Islam any further than Shia versus Sunni versus Other Muslim, but those would generally be called “branches” or something rather than “denominations”. This is all sheer nitpickery, of course :-).
Wikipedia calls the branches of Islam “Branches or Denominations” and the article on Judaism suggests Commonly used terms are movements, as well as denominations varieties, traditions, groupings, streams, branches, trends, and such.” Nitpickery appreciated, I’m currently happy with the divisions.
The family-religion question does have this issue. If I was going to change it, I’d change it to “What is your family’s religious background, as of when you were growing up?” That makes it fit the question above it, but risks making it harder to compare across years. I’m currently lightly leaning towards leaving it as-is, figuring the value of comparison is worth it.