Big Church vs Little Church. Which holds on to truth better?

The Barna Group is a world leader in Church surveys. If you want to know anything about how Church people think, this is the place to go. Most of it is fairly standard & unsurprising, but I can honestly say I had to look twice at the results of its survey titled How Faith Varies by Church Size.

The issue under scrutiny here is whether big or small churches maintain their belief systems better. In other words, what type of church is more wishy-washy; big congregation or small?

I assumed the answer would be small for a number of reasons, but mainly because I felt there would be greater accountability amongst a small fellowship. Surely here false doctrine is picked up quickly. Here, where there has been little, if any, accommodating culture in order to get more backsides on seats.

The Barna Group's survey of 3000 American Christians, however, turns that assumption on its head. (I should point out that Barna's idea of small is 100 or less while 1000 or more is large)

The responses brought several things into sharp focus;

• Attendees of large churches were more likely to give orthodox Christian responses to any question.
• Large church attendees were more likely to believe in Satan, the inerrancy of Scripture, that Jesus was sinless, the omnipotence of God etc.
• Church attendance, private Bible reading, volunteering were all more likely to be done by those in the big churches.

That's not to say there were not predictable findings either. We could probably guess young adults were the most likely to attend a mega church whilst over 60's were more likely to fellowship in a small church.

It seems the magical crossover point was at 200. Either side of this number, your congregation will be markedly different.

The one result which completely floored me was this one;

The religious beliefs and behaviors of people who attend house churches, which average about 20 adults in attendance, are more similar to the results for large conventional churches (i.e., more than 500 adults) than they are to the outcomes among those who attend small conventional churches (i.e., less than 50 adults).

Now I'm scratching my head. Are these results typical of all mega church vs small church scenarios or is this just an American thing?

If we did this survey in Australia, how would the results differ?