YouGov withdraws survey said to show rising church attendance in England and Wales | Christianity

A YouGov poll showing a significant increase in church attendance in parts of the UK has been withdrawn after some survey participants were found to be fraudsters.

The survey was at the center of the Quiet Awakening report published by the Bible Society last year; This report led to reports of a significant resurgence of Christianity, especially among young people.

But YouGov, which conducted the research in 2024, said in a statement on Thursday that the data sample was flawed and that there were “a number of participants that we can now identify as fraudulent.”

Stephan Shakespeare, chief executive of the polling firm, said: “YouGov takes full responsibility for the output of the original 2024 survey and we apologize for what happened.

“We would like to emphasize that the Bible Society always reports the data we provide to them accurately and responsibly. We are reconducting the survey with the Bible Society to obtain solid data on this issue.”

The report claimed that by 2024, 12% of adults in England and Wales will attend church once a month or more; YouGov described this as “a significant increase from 8% in the previous 2018 survey.”

The data also shows an increase in youth participation, rising from 4% of young people aged 18-24 participating monthly in 2018 to 16% in 2024.

The Bible Society said it had “repeatedly sought and received assurances from YouGov as to both the soundness of the methodology and the reliability of the report’s conclusions” and was “deeply disappointed that YouGov not only made a mistake but discovered it so soon.”

The organization said it was told earlier this month that YouGov had “confirmed that it had failed to enable key quality control technologies that protected the sample from a wide range of errors, undermining the reliability of the results”.

The Bible Society insisted there remained “a very positive story to tell.” This past year, he said, “we have witnessed an unprecedented public conversation about Christianity, featuring countless stories of spiritual awakening among Gen Z.”

Andrew Copson, chief executive of Humanists UK, said the withdrawal of data was “both verification and disconfirmation”.

“We must be absolutely clear: there is no revival of Christianity in Britain,” he said. “For almost a year, Humanists UK took a rational, evidence-based approach and repeatedly and meticulously explained why the Bible Society’s claims are not valid.”

David Voas, a quantitative social scientist and professor emeritus at University College London, said YouGov used a “self-selecting” online engagement survey model.

“YouGov will tell everyone to some extent: If you want to do social polls or surveys, please sign up and we will reward you for doing a certain number of these surveys,” he said.

Voas said this leads to “fake responders” because people can claim and do whatever they want. Additionally, he said the method is sensitive to “surveying farmers”; People in the “global south” can complete these surveys en masse for a small monetary reward.

Voas said that artificial intelligence also poses a significant problem. “AI chatbots can conduct online surveys and pose as real respondents. This is a serious weakness of the online participatory panel approach.”

He said: “The numbers just didn’t add up. They stuck to their guns and YouGov backed them. So for them to admit today that it was fundamentally unfounded is actually quite a surprising turnaround.”

“It’s remarkable that we don’t even have to rely on polls here. We can rely on attendance counts by the denominations themselves.

“This kind of information, misinformation, is very, very difficult to correct once it starts to spread. And the effort required to correct it is much greater than the effort required to spread it in the first place.”

A snapshot of the Church of England’s latest annual Mission Statistics report showing attendances for 2025 will be published in the coming weeks.

The most recent report, published last year, showed congregations had grown slightly in recent years, although numbers were still below pre-pandemic levels. The number of regular worshipers in the church is estimated to increase from 1.01 million in 2023 to an estimated 1.02 million in 2024.