Attender Survey

The first component is the Attender Survey. We are asking that you disseminate the link to this online Attender Survey to all the participants of this congregation and encourage them to participate. A good goal is to strive for responses from 50% or more of your regular participants. The survey itself will take a participant about 10-15 minutes to complete. This survey uses a split ballot method, meaning all participants will have 50% of the survey the same and for the other half they are randomly assigned one of two different sections. This approach is used to gather data on more questions without adding length to the survey.

Link to the Attender Survey for your attendees:
[unique survey link is sent from the congregation]

When sending out the Attender Survey link, please use all your regular communication channels. This includes communications such as making announcements about it in your worship service, including it in the bulletin, sending emails, including the link in newsletters, etc. Please encourage participation in this survey for 4 weeks to catch folks who don’t come every week. We created a short video to be used in your communications to your attenders about this survey that can be seen here. Additionally, we designed a poster template that can be used to advertise the survey (after inserting the unique link for your congregation) that can be found here.

If you have attendees who cannot or do not wish to take a survey online, we created a print version of the questionnaire as a pdf for printing. Scroll to the section with regards to languages and there you will be able to download the questionnaire in the language that you need.

Since this survey uses the split ballot method discussed above, please alternate between giving Version A or Version B to your participants to the best of your ability (both are included in the attached pdf). Participants opting for this print option are instructed to return their completed survey to this congregation’s leader. We ask this leader to send all paper surveys completed by congregational participants in one batch to Hartford Institute for Religion Research, 77 Sherman Street, Hartford, CT 06105 or scanned and emailed to info@covidreligionresearch.org.

The second component of this research is an online Congregational Profile Survey for only one leader of the congregation (you or a colleague) to complete. This Congregational Profile Survey will provide context about the congregation itself. Here is the link to the Congregational Profile Survey for you (or a colleague) to complete:

Link to Congregational Profile Survey:
[unique link was emailed]

In gratitude for participating in this research effort, we want to offer the following “thank you” gifts to each participating congregation:

1. 1. A $200 Amazon gift card (to be sent out after data collection ends in December 2024)
   2. An individualized report of your congregation’s responses (to be sent out in Spring 2025; generated if your congregation receives at least 10 online responses to the Attender Survey)
   3. The national summary report from the entire National Attender Survey (to be sent out by late Spring 2025)

There is a place at the end of the Congregational Profile Survey (that you or a colleague will complete) where you can indicate your interest in receiving any or all of these “thank you” gifts and provide the email address to which you wish them to be delivered.