There are countless ways to tabulate and slice statistical data. Our current goal here, however, is to gather simple and anonymous data in a few key categories and then display it as raw counts and percents of the total. That's why most of the data collected is presented in pie charts: they are a good way to present those two measurements.

HOW TO VIEW THE DATA

Viewing the data collected requires no explanation. Just click on the THE DATA menu option above to open the page where all the data collected so far is displayed.

HOW TO PARTICIPATE

Introduction

We enthusiastically invite you to participate in Exmormon Stats' polls (found on THE POLLS option on the menu above) by choosing simple options that express your current preferences and/or situation in any and all of the categories listed. Your participation is even more anonymous than it is on Reddit since we never display who voted what anywhere on the site.

As you know, however, any open poll with no safeguards is prone to being abused. Some people always want to influence results in certain ways for any number of reasons: to prove a point, to win an argument, to forward an agenda, etc. In unprotected polls this is done by voting repeatedly, by bringing others who don't belong to the right demography to vote, etc.

To prevent this in Exmormon Stats, we only allow those registered on Reddit's exmormon group to participate in our anonymous polls. This ensures the data collected is always real by reflecting what the exmormons of Reddit (226K+ people at current count on Feb, 2022) actually think, are and do.

This is why the polls are not available by default. They become visible only once Exmormon Stats "knows" you are, in fact, a registered member of Reddit's exmormon group.

We have accomplished that by enrolling Exmormon Stats as a "web app" on Reddit. In other words, Reddit has provided us with unique credentials to connect with its inner system and interact with those of its registered users that want to. This means that in order to participate in Exmormon Stats you have to tell Reddit you authorize us to become aware of your Reddit username and your registration to its exmormon group (we explain how this is done a little further below).

On one hand, knowing you are in fact registered to Reddit's exmormon group allows us to prevent others (like Mormon staff, for example, who could want the data to show falsehoods) from polluting the data with their participation. We of course know not every registered user in Reddit's exmormon group are exMormons. Many are still believers who have joined to ask questions their church won't answer. Many others have never been Mormon believers to start with, but have joined because they have Mormon family or acquaintances, or for the camaraderie and support there. Despite its internal diversity (which we celebrate) we have defined Reddit's exmormon group as the only demography we want to collect and display data from.

Finally, knowing your Reddit username allows our system to prevent duplicates in the data. This way you are free to vote and choose different options in the same categories again and again, and our system will replace your previous answers with your new ones. This is important since many of us change membership status or religious affiliation, for example, as we leave the church or as keep moving through life, etc.

Participating

Simplified as much as possible, the actual process goes like this:

That's it.

Key Concepts

1. Anonymity: Your anonymity in Exmormon Stats is the same if not better than the anonymity you enjoy at Reddit. As explained above, Exmormon Stats needs to know your Reddit username to prevent duplicate data the next time you come here to change any of your previous selections. However, we never reveal your Reddit username in any way to anybody. The data collected is displayed as a whole completely detached from those we received it from. In other words, if you feel anonymous on Reddit where your username is visible to all, you certainly are more anonymous here where your username is never revealed.
2. Privacy: This is a continuation of what has already been said in the Anonymity point above. Your privacy in Exmormon Stats is ensured by no one knowing who has participated in any of the polls or who has chosen what options in each poll. For example, you can safely declare you are now an atheist here even when you can't on Reddit because some of your believing relatives are following your account there.
3. Data Value: At Reddit's exmormon group we've all seen the countless polls showing up repeatedly asking the rest of the group how many are still believers, how many have become agnostic, how many are now atheists, etc. There are two reasons why those polls are never useful.
   The first reason is that, as normal posts, those polls start falling back as new posts are always being added. Eventually, those poll posts become too old to show up as we scroll and exMormons become unable to participate in them anymore.
   The second reason is that, new poll posts by other users asking the same or similar questions appear again a few hours/days later and, since whatever data was collected by the previous poll posts is lost in the past by now, the process starts again. So, the data collected by previous polls becomes irrelevant almost immediately.
   Exmormon Stats attempts to fix all this by being a persistent repository for those questions constantly reappearing in the exmormon group. The data collected here has immediate and enduring value because it doesn't go away and everybody in the group can update theirs at any time. Now, whenever anyone in Reddit's exmormon group (or any one in the planet) wants to know how many exMormons identify as gay, or how many live in Europe, or how many have migrated to other religions, we are not limited to a very ephemeral poll that won't mean anything in a couple of hours. Now we have a permanent repository for that valuable data available here.