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valuation on the benefits received from the Church.
It had been hoped to pursue this theme further, but in the absence
of adequate anterior research (and one authority was able to state with
reasonable certainty that none existed
(C6)
) this became effectively
impossible within the time available. We must therefore leave it with
only a note that it would appear to be another area meriting further
study.
2.5
The Parish Questionnaire
In order to obtain some basic information about the parochial
level which was felt to be relevant to the diocesan level, a question-
naire was despatched to a selected list of parish treasurers. The
questionnaire itself is reproduced in Appendix A and what follows in
this section are some comments on the format and then on the results.
2.5.1 Some comments and afterthoughts on the format
Since parochial account-keeping is an area known to be diverse
("The methods of church accounting vary so much that it is difficult
to say whether there are 'generally recognized accounting principles'
for churches"
(B26)
), the drafting of the questions was the subject of
considerable thought; and as the area had been so poorly researched
before there was little guidance available as to which sorts of ques-
tions would produce the most useful results. Eventually a format was
adopted which erred on the side of brevity and simplicity at the expense
of full technical detail, in the hope that this would yield a high res-
ponse rate and at least show up major, easily-identifiable trends. To
circulate all the parishes was deemed too expensive and accordingly a
selected list was prepared by the Diocesan Secretary, working principally
on two criteria. The first of these was a preference for treasurers who
would probably reply. The second was to select from within that group
