279Appendix
Appendix
Growing Young Families Project
Research Goals
The goal of the Fuller Youth Institute’s Growing Young Families Project was to build upon findings from the Churches Engaging Young People Project (described in detail in Growing Young: Six Essential Strategies to Help Young People Discover and Love Your Church) and to investigate how parents understand and describe their relationship with their children and the church as their children grow in their faith and participate in churches. Accordingly, two primary questions motivated this study: (1) How do parents stay connected to and support their children’s faith journeys as they grow older? and (2) How do parents and churches jointly support children’s faith journeys?
Representatives from FYI contacted 181 leaders from churches that had participated or were currently participating in a Sticky Faith or Growing Young cohort coordinated by FYI. Leaders were asked to nominate one to five parents and provide their names, contact information, number and ages of children, and an explanation of why they were nominating that individual.
Fifty-two leaders responded by nominating a total of 148 parents (either individuals or sets of parents). Of these 148 parents, 44 were selected to participate, were contacted by a member of the research team, and completed a 60-minute semi-structured phone interview during May and June 2017 that explored various topics, including their maturing child’s faith, church involvement, service, career, and relational intimacy with family and friends. Further demographic information concerning these participants is below:
State Distribution
Alabama 1
California 11
Colorado 3
Connecticut 2
Florida 4
Georgia 1
Indiana 4
Iowa 2
Massachusetts 2
Minnesota 3
Mississippi 2
Ohio 1
Pennsylvania 1
Texas 5
Washington 1
Wisconsin 1
Gender
Female/male couple 14
Female 23
Male 7
Divorced 3
Divorced and remarried 1
Married 36
Widowed 1
No marital status reported 3
Ethnicity
Asian or Pacific Islander 2
Hispanic or Latino 3
White 39
Subsequent Focus Groups
Given the importance of diversity for the present research, the research team initiated a second phase of data collection involving focus groups that included 7 additional single parents, 7 additional parents of post-college children, 10 additional African American parents, 7 additional Asian American parents, and 4 additional Hispanic or Latino parents. In total, an additional 35 parents participated, yielding 79 total participants for the research project (44 participated in interviews, 35 participated in focus groups).
Limitations
Though the present study provides insights we believe are valuable to the study of faith formation and young people, limitations of the research design should also be noted. Nominations for participation relied on the perceptions of nominators. Other parents who also matched the criteria noted above but were unknown to the nominator may have been omitted from nominations. The present study also relied on nominators within FYI’s network of churches, and future studies may benefit by extending similar research to other contexts. Results of the study are also reliant on what was expressed by participants to interviewers; other important factors may have contributed to their children’s faith formation without their awareness.
It is also difficult to identify causal relationships with the design of the present study because various factors noted by parents may influence one another and other important factors may not have been identified. Future studies may seek to establish causality using experimental designs by introducing interventions that incorporate the factors noted in the present study and may improve the generalizability of the present findings by increasing the sample size as well.