The Cooperative Congregations Studies Partnership’s primary research program is its Faith Communities Today (FACT) series of national surveys of U.S. congregations, details about which are presented below. The series’ goal is to track changes in a broad spectrum of characteristics of American congregations, identity the sources of such changes and through occasional special modules more deeply plumb the dynamics of selected congregational practices and challenges.
The FACT series was launched in 2000 with the largest national survey of congregations ever conducted in the United States. The study of 14,301 local churches, synagogues, parishes, temples and mosques provided a public profile of the organizational backbone of religion in America – congregations – at the beginning of a new millennium. CCSP will conduct a mega-survey like FACT2000 at the turn of every decade, coinciding with the U.S. Census; and in fact planning has begun for 2010.
Additionally, and just as the Census Bureau conducts regular national surveys between its large-scale decadal enumerations, it is our intent to conduct several, more typically sized, national surveys of congregations, in intervening years. FACT2005 was our first intra-decadal survey, and you can find a description and related reports below. FACT2008 A First Look is available now and the full report will be out by October 15, 2009. Planning for FACT2010 is currently underway.
FACT2008
The FACT2008 used key informants in each surveyed congregation, typically the senior or sole clergy leader, to complete the survey. The survey sample is a composite of three layers of random national samples designed to represent the universe of American congregations. The final aggregated data set contains questionnaires from 2,527 congregations. The sampling error for such types of samples is difficult to calculate with precision. We estimate it to be +/- 4 percent.
Press Release
Research Report - A First Look
Partners' Findings
Overall Findings
Survey Methods
