What types of questions might differentiate types of Mormons?

I was intrigued by a guest post at W&T a couple of weeks ago where an anonymous poster shared a question from a survey the Church was doing that invited respondents to categorize themselves as one of five types of Church members. (These appear to be unrelated to Robert Kirby’s five types of Mormons.) Here are the five types. Note that I’m dropping the edits between the February and October versions shown in the W&T post and just going with the October version.

• I am committed to the gospel, but personal spirituality is more important to me than being institutionally religious. I may attend worship services regularly, but I don’t feel obligated to attend every meeting. As a Christian, I value being open-minded, fair, and tolerant.
• I am committed to the gospel, and the Church plays a central role in my life. I believe all of its teachings. I usually read my scriptures daily. I think members should be strictly obedient to the counsel they receive from their priesthood leaders.
• I primarily belong to the Church because of family, tradition, culture, or community. I usually enjoy participating in the Church socially, and feel that God rules more by love than by fear.
• I am generally less interested in religion and/or spirituality. Even though I may believe some Church teachings, they don’t play a large role in my life. I don’t attend church as often as other people do. Sometimes I have been frustrated by the impact of religion on society.
• I am committed to the gospel, and the Church is important to me I try to follow its teachings and do the things I’m supposed to, balancing with life’s other priorities. I tend to focus on practical applications of the gospel that are most relevant to my current life and family situation.

What most surprised me about this is that the survey apparently just straight up asked people to categorize themselves. This seems way out of the norm to me for how social science questionnaires work. I mean, I understand that companies, and I guess churches, might make profiles of common types of their customers or members. But it seems much more conventional to me that instead of asking people to directly categorize themselves, a researcher would ask them a bunch of far simpler questions, and then aggregate the responses by looking at which ones correlate with each other and come up with the types without showing them to the people taking the survey. If you’re familiar with the problem of double-barreled questions, which ask more than one thing at a time, these are like ten-barreled questions.

I strongly suspect that that’s what the Church researchers originally did. And that got me to wondering what questions they might have asked to try to get at types of Church members. In this post, I’ve come up with a list of questions that I hope or wish they asked, and that of course I’d love to see data on for a large number of Church members to see if types of Mormons fall out like I’d expect.

Beliefs

How strongly to you believe in each of the following Latter-day Saint doctrines?
Response options: Don’t believe at all to believe completely

• God lives.
• God loves us.
• God cannot look upon sin with the least degree of allowance.
• Jesus lived a perfect life.
• Jesus Christ atoned for our sins.
• The early church established by Jesus fell into apostasy.
• Joseph Smith restored the Church.
• Prophetic authority to lead the Church has been passed in an unbroken line from Joseph Smith to Russell M. Nelson.
• The Book of Mormon is a translation of an ancient record of a people who lived in the Americas.
• The Book of Abraham is a translation of an ancient record written by Abraham.
• We lived in the pre-mortal existence before our life on earth.
• There is life after death.
• Our place in the life after death will depend on the kind of life we have lived.
• Our place in the life after death will depend on whether we have performed the required ordinances (or someone else has performed them on our behalf).

How inspired do you consider the following sources of information?
Response options: Not at all inspired to completely inspired

• The Old Testament
• The New Testament
• The Book of Mormon
• The Doctrine and Covenants
• The Pearl of Great Price
• The Family Proclamation
• Russell M. Nelson
• Other members of the First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve
• Seventies
• Presidencies of general auxiliaries
• Area authorities
• Local leadership

How important do you believe it is to follow the following Church teachings?
Response options: Not at all important to extremely important

• The Word of Wisdom
• The Law of Chastity
• Tithing
• Keeping the Sabbath Day holy
• Attending Sunday meetings
• Attending the temple regularly
• Serving a full-time mission
• Always having a current temple recommend
• Serving others
• Being honest with others

How important to you is your identity as each of the following?
Response options: Not at all important to extremely important

• A Latter-day Saint
• A Christian
• A religious person
• A political conservative

Behaviors

How well do you follow the following Church teachings?
Response options: Not at all well to extremely well

• The Word of Wisdom
• The Law of Chastity
• Tithing
• Keeping the Sabbath Day holy
• Attending Sunday meetings
• Attending the temple regularly
• Serving a full-time mission
• Always having a current temple recommend
• Serving others
• Being honest with others

How often do you do or experience the following?
Response options: Never to daily

• Read scriptures
• Pray
• Feel God’s love
• Feel guided by the Holy Ghost
• Feel a sense of awe or wonder

For which types of decisions do you turn to Church sources (e.g., scriptures, GAs) versus other sources (e.g., secular experts, friends) for guidance?
Response options: Entirely other sources to entirely Church sources

• Whether/when to serve a mission
• Schooling
• When to marry
• Whom to marry
• Number and timing of children
• Employment-related questions

Connections

How connected to the Church do you feel through the following people?
Response options: Not at all connected to extremely connected

• Parents
• Siblings (if applicable)
• Spouse (if applicable)
• Children (if applicable)
• Extended family
• Ancestors
• Friends
• Neighbors
• Ward members

Other stuff

I think all of the above might make more sense when broken down by demographic variables like age, gender, country, age at baptism, served a full-time mission or not, type of calling most often held, and number of different wards or branches lived in. I’d also be interested to know to what degree people are bothered by a whole series of issues (polygamy, male-only priesthood, priesthood/temple ban, etc.), but that seems like a whole other survey that maybe would only be applicable to a subset of Church members.

I’d love to hear what you’d add to or subtract from my list (unlike some people, I won’t condemn you for adding to or taking away), or where you think I may have completely missed the boat.