My dear /u/cumorahlds , having never served in a clerk-like position, is this something that ward and stake clerks might have access to directly? It seems to me that with the "scan the recommend" approach, that great and spacious building¹ in downtown Salt Lake should have very fine-grained statistics, including trend reporting. Your mission president might even be willing to go to bat for you to get the data for your analysis, given your long and solid history of reporting church trends.

Just a thought. Happy to try to propose it to him if you feel less comfortable doing so. Otherwise, you have an inherit Reddit sample bias. ;)

.^{1. That's just what my brother called it when visited downtown Salt Lake once after he learned the term in family scripture study. It's always stuck, and I like it. I'm certain he's not alone.}