The attached spreadsheet and set of charts are compiled from data from the Pastoral Research Centre Trust, Religious Trends, and the British Social Attitudes surveys.
The Catholic Church in England and Wales, and Scotland, has invested rather less in data gathering and management than some other Christian denominations in Britain. Data reported in diocesan yearbooks rely heavily on parish-level co-operation, competence and accuracy in record-keeping in reporting the size of the local community, attendance, and participation in rites of passage. The PRCT accordingly triangulates different Catholic sources to derive estimates of entries to the Catholic community and of the size of the community itself.
Stephen Bullivant at St Mary’s University College works primarily with survey data from the British Social Attitudes survey to analyse the Catholic community, and has recently (May 2016) published a report on Catholicism in Britain using 1983-2014 data, available here.
Data source: Peter Brierley, Religious Trends and Spencer, Digest (full details in the spreadsheet below).
Data source: Spencer, Digest (full details in the spreadsheet below).
Data source: Spencer, Digest (full details in the spreadsheet below).
Data source: Spencer, Digest (full details in the spreadsheet below).
Data source: British Social Attitudes surveys, 1983-2008, National Centre for Social Research & UK Data Archive.
Click here to download the spreadsheet. This includes the different time series used to create all the graphs above, with supporting information.
Eddie You can email them to c.d.field@bham.ac.uk Best wishes. Clive