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Royle, M. (2020, October 22). Faith Communities Today Survey (FACT) 2010, UCC Congregations.
Summary
The Faith Communities Today 2010 national survey brings together 26 individual surveys of congregations. Twenty-four were conducted by or for partner denominations and faith groups, representing 32 of the country's largest denominations and traditions. The common core questionnaire of the survey replicates more than 150 questions from the 2000, 2005 and 2008 surveys, plus a special section on the 2008 recession. This dataset contains the FACT 2010 data from the National Survey of UCC Congregations.
Sampled congregations were sent copies of the survey instrument and invited to complete the survey either on paper or online.
Sampling Procedures
A random sample of more than 1,200 congregations was invited to participate in the 2010 FACT surveys, with racial/ethnic congregations oversampled so that these smaller subgroups would have enough participants for meaningful analysis. The sampling ratios were: European-American and multi-ethnic 1:5, black and Asian 1:2, Hispanic and Native American 1:1. The response rate overall was 51 percent, with somewhat lower rates among the smallest churches and racial/ethnic churches, as is true of most surveys, and higher rates among churches in the Great Plains Region. Congregations that had lost members over the past five years were no more or less likely to participate than those that had gained members. Overall, the sample of 640 congregations appears to be a good representation of the denomination at large.
Participants were asked to complete the surveys either on paper or online, with email follow-ups of those that did not. The study was well-publicized in denominational media with requests for people to participate if they received a request.
Internet and mailed responses were combined into one file. The dataset was cleaned in several ways. Blanks were replaced with zeros when the question called for checking one or more options if at least one option was checked, or left as blanks if the entire question was omitted. Also, other illogical discrepancies, such as percentages that should add to 100 percent were corrected if they did not add to approximately this amount and the correct numbers could be inferred from the surrounding questions, e.g., if respondents had entered numbers in each age category rather than percentages, the numbers were changed to percentages.
