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NSYR Wave 3 Telephone Survey Completed: Following Youth into Emerging Adulthood
The NSYR Wave 3 telephone survey, fielded from September 2007 through April 2008, has now been completed with 77% of the original survey respondents participating! At the start of Wave 1, respondents were between the ages of 13 and 17, and were between the ages of 18 - 24 when they completed the Wave 3 survey.
This third wave survey, which has been generously funded by The Lilly Endowment Inc. and The John Templeton Foundation will provide valuable data for working to understand causal relationships between religion and other dimensions of life, as well as for exploring how religious beliefs and activities change over time, especially as teenagers move into emerging adulthood. "Transforming the cross-sectional NSYR Wave I data into a panel study that follows our national youth sample on their journey into emerging adulthood will take an already invaluable study to a new level of significance and usefulness," says Dr. Christian Smith. He adds, "Multi-wave, longitudinal surveys provide uniquely suited data for better understanding the causal effects of religion in social life, because they enable us to study the effects of factors measured in one wave on diverse outcomes in following waves." The survey research team has already begun preliminary data analysis.
The Wave 3 telephone survey is available for download:
View the W3 survey instrument [PDF]
Alterations to the Wave 3 survey instrument were made to include age-appropriate phrasing and language to accommodate changes in the lives of the respondents as they move into adulthood. Questions exploring new topics were added and expanded upon in the new instrument. These include:
- Changes in household composition
- Marriage and cohabitation
- Pregnancy
- Finances
There are important things to keep in mind when using the instrument: The survey utilizes very complex skip patterns and not all questions were asked of all respondents, depending on things like family structure and religious affiliations and practices.
The Principal Investigator of Waves 1, 2, and 3, Dr. Christian Smith, is William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of Sociology and Director for the Center for the Study of Religion at the University of Notre Dame. The third wave of the study is administered through the Center for the Study of Religion at Notre Dame with continued cooperation from the Carolina Population Center and the Department of Sociology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
In April of 2008, as the Wave 3 telephone survey was closing out, the NSYR research team began fielding the Wave 3 face-to-face interviews with the same teenagers that were surveyed and interviewed in the first and second waves of the research project. We expect to complete the in-person interviews by September or October of 2008.
The $1,096,631 Wave 3 NSYR grant from Lilly Endowment Inc. has been combined with a $99,750 grant from the John Templeton Foundation and research support money from the University of Notre Dame to complete the Third Wave of the NSYR. The third wave of data collection will continue and expand upon the work done in the initial two waves of research. All three waves of research have the following goals: (1) to investigate the shape and influence of religion and spirituality in the lives of U.S. adolescents, (2) to identify effective practices in the religious, moral, and social formation of the lives of youth, (3) to describe the extent to which youth participate in and benefit from the programs and opportunities that religious communities are offering to their youth, (4) to foster an informed national discussion about the influence of religion in youth's lives, and (5) to encourage sustained reflection about and rethinking of our cultural and institutional practices with regard to youth and religion.
Given the highly dynamic and developmentally important events of adolescence, longitudinal data collection is especially essential in youth research.
Continue to visit the National Study of Youth and Religion website (www.youthandreligion.org) for more information on Wave 3 of the NSYR.
May 29, 2008
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