Thank you!
Please keep answering if you haven't!
I was told by a friend that my premise is wrong, and I have thought about it and will solve the problem.
The graph will ALWAYS be linear because the maximum number of years one could have spent in the borg increases linearly...
i.e a person who was baptized in 2000 and came out in 2015 stayed in 15 years.
A person who was baptized in 1999 and got out in 2015 stayed in 16 years.
17 for 1998, 18 for 1997, etc.
So the maximum number of years in possible increases linearly, and obviously changes each year.
So to fix that and see true results I need to compare the number of years in to the maximum possible years in.
i.e. If a person was baptized in 1950 and only stayed until 1958, it is obvious that the WT held them a lot less stronger than a person who stayed until 2000, i.e. 50 years out of the possible 65.
If I take the difference, and still there is a downward trend, then that factor will be removed.
The other factor that people have mentioned is lack of access to the internet or death of those baptized in earlier decades compared to now. The thought is that most of the answers will be of people who access the internet and are exJW's, which will be the younger generation.
I beg to differ. I have had lots of responses from people baptized in the 70's, 80's, and 90's.
Yet another factor mentioned was that people from the 2000's may yet come out. That may be true, but the data is showing that there is less variability in the responses of the people baptized after 2000. This means that the data has even more of a predictive power than in previous decades, and the difference in years between in and out IS shortening significantly.
The average for the people in the 50's to the 90's is around 20 years, the average post 2000 is less than 10 years.
