In 2024, The Little Rock Congregations Study is doing something we have never done before: giving away our surveys to anyone who wants to use them! We want to help places of worship survey their own members about community engagement.
The Little Rock Congregations Study began in 2012 with Dr. Rebecca Glazier and a single class of students at UA Little Rock working with just five congregations in our community. We wanted the students to get out of the classroom and do some good in the community and we wanted to learn some things about religion, politics, and community engagement.
In 2016, we partnered with the Clinton School of Public Service, received a grant from the American Political Science Association’s Alma Ostrom and Leah Hopkins Awan Civic Education fund, and expanded to work with 17 congregations.
In 2020, we moved our data collection online—thanks in part to the COVID-19 pandemic—and were able to work with 35 congregations, producing personalized reports for each one of them (you can see an example here: 2020 LRCS Example Congregation Report). 
In July 2024, Dr. Glazier’s book on our research comes out, illustrating the broad benefits of community engagement. “Faith and Community: How Engagement Strengthens Members, Places of Worship, and Society” will be published by Temple University Press. The book uses qualitative and quantitative data from clergy and congregants over 12 years of research to make the case that community engagement benefits everyone—members are happier and healthier, places of worship have warmer and more giving cultures, and society is less divided and more democratic.
The book also provides detailed case studies of real congregations in Little Rock—big and small, Black and white, Christian and Muslim—so that diverse places of worship can see different models for community engagement that might fit their interests and membership. But as social scientists, we almost always recommend data collection.
Which is why, for the first time ever, we are making our surveys free and publicly available, so that any congregation, whether in Little Rock or around the world, can use them to survey their own members. To see the questions we used, check out the pdf of a reader-friendly version of the survey, printed from the Qualtrics survey platform, available to download here. If your members would prefer a paper version, a condensed survey is available to download and print here. If you want to distribute an already formatted electronic survey to your members for free, here is a Google form with all of the questions already uploaded. You can check out the questions and if you want a free copy of the Google form for your congregation, just email Dr. Glazier (raglazier@ualr.edu). Using your own copy, you can even add your own questions to the survey!
We think community engagement can help make people, congregations, and democracy better and we want to spread that message as far and wide as possible. Finding out what issues your members care about can help you pick the best community programs to dedicate your time and efforts to. Our data show that the end result will be well worth it.
If you have questions about the survey or would like some help interpreting your data or generating a reader-friendly report like this sample one, please contact Dr. Rebecca Glazier at raglazier@ualr.edu.