Over the coming year, Sumeru will be undertaking a survey of Canadian Buddhist organizations, in association with the University of Toronto, with the supervision of Professor Frances Garrett, associate chair of the Centre for the Study of Religion.
Our goal is to create a printed version of the www.canadianbuddhism.info directory , with detailed information about each organization, and to provide demographic and sociological analysis of the data we hope will be provided by the more than 485 organizations in the target group.
Information will be gathered through a 6-8 page survey. The portion of the survey dealing with contact information, lineage and activities will be associated with individual groups. The portion dealing with sociological questions will be dis-associated from individual groups and analyzed anonymously.
Here are some sample areas of questioning:
- Premises (owned, rented, borrowed; urban/rural; zoning, etc.)
- Congregations (size, gender, ethnicity, age, membership, etc.)
- Leadership (ordination, term of office, governance, ongoing education, affiliations, etc.)
- Practices (services, meditation, chanting, retreats, precepts, freeing animals, etc.)
- Passages (marriage, funeral, ancestor worship, other)
- Social capital (community services, social activism, intra- and inter-faith dialogue, neighbourhood acceptance, etc.)
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