This post explains how AI-enabled qualitative research can clarify the forces behind rising religious hostility in Australia and guide curriculum and policy choices. The primary keyword is "qualitative analysis of religious education" and the intended audience is education researchers, school leaders, and social cohesion policy teams. The post uses concrete 2021–2026 statistics and published interviews to show what to analyze, how to structure thematic coding, and how AI tools can speed synthesis while preserving research ethics.
Key Takeaways
According to The Conversation Africa (17 August 2026), qualitative evidence from interviews and surveys shows declining belonging and rising hostility tied to reductions in religious education access, and AI-enabled qualitative analysis can help convert that testimony into actionable policy recommendations.
- According to the Scanlon Foundation's Mapping Social Cohesion 2025 report, just 46% of Australians reported a sense of belonging in 2025, down from 64% in 2020.
- According to the Lowy Institute Poll 2026, 73% of Australians said the country had benefited from cultural diversity in 2026, a near 20-point decline since 2024.
- According to the 2021 Australian Census, 39% of Australians recorded "no religion" in 2021, up from 30% in 2016, illustrating the secular shift in identification.
- According to reporting cited in The Conversation Africa, a survey of 10, 000 Australian Christians found 92% saying it was riskier to affirm their beliefs than five years earlier, and 42% reporting hostility or threats.
What happened and how researchers measured it
Answer: Australia is experiencing measurable declines in social cohesion and rising religious hostility as captured in surveys and interview-based research.
According to the Scanlon Foundation's Mapping Social Cohesion 2025 report, 46% of Australians said they had a sense of belonging in 2025, down from 64% in 2020, and the report documents growing negative attitudes across faith groups.
According to the Lowy Institute Poll 2026, 73% of respondents in 2026 said Australia benefited from cultural diversity, which the Lowy Institute described as the largest movement on any question in the history of its polling because that share fell nearly 20 points from 2024.
According to the 2026 article in The Conversation Africa, qualitative interviews conducted by Suzanne Rutland and Zehavit Gross since 2018 involved teachers and students across six faiths and found religious education helped "encourage critical thinking in children, instill kindness and tolerance, and help expand their worldviews."
The Conversation Africa article also quotes a participant saying, "if we don’t put religion on the table, it will go on under the table, " which researchers used to illustrate risks when formal religious education disappears.
Findings Snapshot
| Date | Metric / Source | Value | Implication for qualitative research |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 | Scanlon Foundation, Mapping Social Cohesion 2025 | 46% reported a sense of belonging (down from 64% in 2020) | Prioritize interviews and thematic coding on belonging and identity across age groups |
| 2026 | Lowy Institute Poll 2026 | 73% said Australia benefited from diversity (nearly 20-pt drop vs 2024) | Use longitudinal coding to detect shifting frames about diversity and threat |
| 2021 | Australian Census 2021 | 39% recorded "no religion" (up from 30% in 2016) | Sample secular and non-religious respondents for comparative thematic analysis |
| 2024–2026 | Survey of 10, 000 Christians (reported in The Conversation Africa) | 92% said it was riskier to affirm beliefs vs five years earlier; 42% experienced hostility | Code for experiences of public expression, perceived risk, and online/offline harassment |
Implications for education researchers and school leaders
Answer: Researchers should combine interview-based thematic analysis with structured sentiment and co-occurrence analyses to map where schools can intervene.
Education researchers must design sampling to capture teachers, principals, students, parents, and faith leaders so cross-segment comparisons reveal who feels excluded; The Conversation Africa highlights interviews across six faiths as a model for multi-faith sampling.
School leaders should treat special religious education and general religious literacy as complementary: The Conversation Africa reports interview evidence that special religious education classes helped students "have an open mind about every other religion, " indicating curriculum-level interventions can reduce hostility.
Policy teams should use mixed qualitative measures: thematic coding of testimony (teacher and student interviews), discourse analysis of local media, and structured surveys to triangulate scale and sentiment, as the Scanlon and Lowy data indicate shifts at population scale that need contextual explanation from qualitative accounts.
How Evidano helps: AI-enabled qualitative workflows for this topic
Problem: Interview volume and slow synthesis
Answer: Large interview datasets are time-consuming to code manually and easy to fragment across spreadsheets.
Evidano is an AI-powered qualitative data analysis platform that helps researchers analyze interviews, open-ended surveys, and documents.
Evidano feature mapping: use automated transcription with custom dictionaries to convert audio from teacher and student interviews into searchable text, then run thematic and frequency analyses to identify emerging frames about belonging.
Problem: Cross-segment comparison is error-prone
Answer: Comparing themes across faith groups, ages, and regions requires consistent coding and easy cross-tabulation.
Evidano feature mapping: use hierarchical codes and cross-segment analysis features to compare themes such as "perceived threat" and "identity" across student, parent, and teacher groups, while the platform preserves source links and timestamps for auditability.
Learn more about relevant capabilities on the Evidano features page: Evidano features.
Problem: Ethical transcription and PII risk
Answer: Sensitive testimony about religious harassment requires PII protection and secure storage.
Evidano feature mapping: Evidano provides transcription with PII redaction and data encryption, and includes governance controls that keep qualitative datasets research-focused without exposing raw identifiers.
FAQ: qualitative analysis of religious education
How can AI help code interviews about religion without biasing results?
Answer: AI can accelerate consistent coding while leaving interpretive judgments to researchers.
Supporting detail: Train custom dictionaries and code schemas from a seed set of human-coded interviews, run multiple model passes, and validate AI-assisted codes against independent human coders to measure intercoder agreement.
What sampling strategy should researchers use to study religious education in schools?
Answer: Use purposive multiphase sampling that includes students, teachers, principals, faith leaders, and parents across urban and regional settings.
Supporting detail: The Conversation Africa cited interviews across six faiths as effective; ensure samples include secular-identified respondents from the 2021 Census to compare experiences.
Can thematic AI analysis detect rising hostility over time?
Answer: Yes, when combined with longitudinal sampling and sentiment trend analysis.
Supporting detail: Pair coded themes with time-stamped survey data such as the Scanlon 2025 and Lowy 2026 polls to link qualitative shifts to population-level sentiment changes.
Is qualitative research on religion ethical in schools?
Answer: Yes, when it follows strict consent, anonymization, and non-diagnostic protocols.
Supporting detail: Researchers must obtain informed consent, apply PII redaction, and clearly state that findings are for education and social cohesion policy, not individual diagnosis.
Conclusion & Next Steps
Reframing the evidence from The Conversation Africa through AI-enabled qualitative methods shows where curriculum and policy can act to rebuild belonging in Australian schools.
Researchers should prioritize multi-faith interviews, longitudinal coding, and cross-segment analysis to translate testimony into targeted interventions; the Scanlon and Lowy 2025–2026 data provide a quantitative backdrop for those qualitative stories.
To begin a reproducible, secure qualitative workflow that includes transcription, thematic coding, and cross-segment comparisons, consider tools built for education research.
Get hands-on: Try Evidano for free.
Topics
- qualitative analysis of religious education
- religious education Australia
- AI-enabled qualitative research
- school social cohesion research
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