Statistical analysis on the opinion of the people in Chiangmai and Lamphun provinces (Thailand) on the idea of fixing Sunday Buddhist Sabbath

Abstract

At present, most Buddhists in Thailand study or work in both government and private sectors on workdays - from Monday to Friday. Thus, they do not have time to go to temple where they can listen to a sermon or perform religious activities. Accordingly, it causes great effect on the attempt of improving Thai people in virtue and morality, that is, it is not effective as it should be. This research is the study of the opinion of people on the idea of fixing Sunday Buddhist sabbath. The data have been collected from 2 parts of questionnaires: personal data and their viewpoints. In conducting cluster random sampling, the data are collected from respondents living in 29 villages in 12 districts in both Chiangmai and Lamphun provinces with a total number of 1,248 respondents. The descriptive statistics and the analytic statistics are the correlation between 2 variables, Correspondence Analysis, Category Principal Components Analysis (CATPCA) and Regression with Optimal Scaling (Category Regression). From CATPCA, it is found that there is relationship between personal data and their opinion at 0.894. When conducting Regression with Optimal Scaling at the level of significance 0.05, it is found that the most important variables that affect the opinion are intention of going to temple on Sunday, reasons for not going to temple, occupations, purposes to go to temple, activities that should be performed at temple on Sunday and the best alternative of making merit respectively. When analyzing the component part of personal data, it is found that the opinion on going to temple on Sunday is the most important variable of almost all other variables except for level of education and certain occupations. © Taru Publications.