FAITH Communities TODAY
 Hartford Seminary  •  77 Sherman St.  •  Hartford, CT 06105  
(860) 509-9542  •  fact@hartsem.edu

FACTs on youth
 data from the Fact2000 study

Findings Regarding Youth Involvement and Growth
by Dave Roozen


Growing = answering 1 or 2 to the following question:

Since 1995, has the above number of regularly participating adults:

1) Increased 10% or more  
 2) Increased 5% to 9%
3) Stayed about the same (+/- 4%)
4) Decreased 5% to 9% 
5) Decreased 10% or more

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Youth Involvement:  

Few/Hardly Any = 4 & 5
Some = 3
Most/Almost all = 1 & 2


How many of the high school age children of your adult participants would you estimate are involved in the religious life and activities of your congregation?

1Almost all   2 Most   3 Some   4 Few   5 Hardly Any

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Percent of Growing Congregations By Level of Youth Involvement for All FACT Protestants except Methodist, Non-Denominational and Mega-Churches*

%Growing

Level of Youth Involvement

Few/Hardly Any

 33.6%
Some  48.2%
Most/Almost all  58.2%

N = 6,773 congregation

  • The excepted groups did not ask the youth involvement questions

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Interpretation: There is a positive relationship between growth and youth involvement – the higher the level of youth involvement, the greater the percentage of growing congregations (or, alternatively because causation is ambiguous in cross sectional correlations, the greater the growth the higher the level of youth involvement). The positive relationship is found in each of FACT’s three Protestant families – liberal, moderate and conservative, with the relationship being strongest within the liberal Protestant family and weakest (but still significant) with conservative Protestants. Overall, this is one of the strongest growth relationships in the FACT study.

Professor Roozen is the director of Hartford Institute for Religion Research and co-director of the Faith Communities Today project.

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