A survey on the retention of youth. Please give me 10 seconds of your time.
Posted by Matt W. on February 27th, 2007Please click on the link below and take the survey. I will leave the survey up until next wednesday.
16 Responses to “A survey on the retention of youth. Please give me 10 seconds of your time.”
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Interesting survey. Can we see the results next Wednesday?
Comment # 1 left by david on February 27th, 2007
I hope so, This is the first Survey Ive ever made, and I may need to cough up some money to be able to do what I wanted to do with the data gathered…
Comment # 2 left by Matt W. on February 27th, 2007
FWIW, 8 and 9 needed more options. I trusted my youth leaders, but felt more than happy to disagree with them. They were all good people, but some of them had crazy ideas I disagreed with (across the spectrum from believing in a literal Genesis creation to strange focuses on the WoW). I marked that I trusted them and they trusted me, but felt like there needed to be more nuance. Maybe the comment can count as my nuance.
Comment # 3 left by Sam B on February 27th, 2007
For those of us who are first generation, it’d be good to have “n/a” as an option on the questions about youth leaders and YM/YW programs…I just left them blank. Sorry if that mixes up the results somehow…
Comment # 4 left by Naiah Earhart on February 27th, 2007
There isn’t an option for parents of different standings in church activity (e.g. “family prayer with only one parent attending,” etc.).
Comment # 5 left by Cameron on February 27th, 2007
I found 8 and 9 difficult since I changed wards and matured between beginning and end of the youth programs. My answers would be polar opposites depending upon which reference I chose.
Comment # 6 left by jose on February 27th, 2007
Good survey, although I see some of the same omissions as mentioned above. I think it is impossible to design a survey that covers all the possible answers, but this one should give some results worth pondering.
I think temple attendance for parents and youth is a good indicator, but in my case, we lived where there were no temples within two day’s journey; thus my parents didn’t attend regularly, and I only did baptisms for the dead once as a teenager–but I believe we would have attended the temple regularly if we had lived near one.
At sixteen, I moved from a ward with a huge number of active youth to one where there were only about 10 of us aged 12-18, going to about eight different schools. Very different experiences, but I answered in the spirit of the questions, rather than the letter. Great experiences and leaders in both places.
Comment # 7 left by RoAnn on February 27th, 2007
I only did baptisms for the dead once as a teenager–but I believe we would have attended the temple regularly if we had lived near one.
I don’t think regular temple trips were pushed as much then, either. I was in the opposite situation from RoAnn…too many youth wanted to go to the temple (SL) and there was too much competition so we didn’t get to go very often.
Comment # 8 left by Michelle on February 27th, 2007
Interesting survey. They charge you to obtain the results, Matt?
Comment # 9 left by Connor on February 27th, 2007
Connor, they charge to filter the results in a useful way. $20 a month.
Comment # 10 left by Matt W. on February 28th, 2007
Sam B, thanks for the nuance
Naiah, I’ll be honest, with what I intended to do with the data, all the questions except 1 and 2 are pretty useless for 1st gen members.
Cameron, good catch, wish I’d though of that. Perhaps we will have to do a retest or supplement for that data?
Jose, That is a good point, perhaps I should have qualified them with “generally speaking” or “on the whole”
Roann, perhaps size of group should have been a question as well…
Michelle, that is interesting, you’d think you could have just driven over to another Temple…?
Comment # 11 left by Matt W. on February 28th, 2007
Ok, judging by results so far, I really need to get more balance on this survey. Any ideas of where to ask innactive people to take the survey?
Comment # 12 left by Matt W. on February 28th, 2007
If anyone would like to increase the effectiveness of this survey, please pass the link around, we especially need inactive members.
You can link them to this…
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.asp?u=931543390463
Comment # 13 left by Matt W. on February 28th, 2007
I tried to answer the spirit of the questions, although there were too many gray areas.
So just to pass along my difficulties for your own future reference:
I lived in three different places during my YW years. Very different wards.
My parents would have regular FHE/prayer or scripture study for a few years, then not regular for a while, and then regular again.
One parent was a convert, one was several generation pioneer stock type.
Comment # 14 left by JKS on February 28th, 2007
The first question did not have an option for how I am today. I am active and go to church nearly every sunday, but I do not beleive the BOM, prophets, preisthood, etc. I do not believe the church to be true, although I do consider myself mormon.
Comment # 15 left by cbrown on February 28th, 2007
JKS, thanks, since I am getting sort of uneven results(almost all active and only 2 inactive), this may end up a test run anyway. I will consider your choices if I choose to do this again. (In a year or so..)
Cbrown, same goes to you. thanks.
Comment # 16 left by Matt W. on March 1st, 2007