CTi research director John LaRue is responsible for telling us what our readers think. On a recent visit to our end of the building, John seemed to have lost a few inches off his six-foot-six-inch frame. “That gender-roles survey gave us a mountain of data,” he said in an uncharacteristic lapse into exasperation. “Even after I analyzed shovelfuls of it, the mountain is still there.” Clearly, our four-page survey tapped a mother-lode of information about how men and women who read CT think about and relate to each other.
Providing data for articles is just one way the CTi research department serves us—and you. On behalf of the six magazines published by our parent company, John and his staff regularly perform brain surgery (via the U.S. Postal Service) on a sampling of readers. Not only do they discover which articles enjoy the highest readership, they learn a few things about the readers themselves. For example, most of you are 46.4-year-old men. More than one-third are clergy and 57 percent are college graduates.
Of course, research produces some surprises. This survey turned up a few CT readers married to the same sex—and some who are neither male nor female. John assures us those respondents merely goofed in filling out the survey.
After picking your brains, it’s only fair that we give you a closer look at us. The photos illustrating our cover story feature some CTi employees and their spouses.
LYN CRYDERMAN, Senior Associate Editor
