Project History

The project began in 2016 as a part of the Education and Human Development section of the Bass Connections program at Duke University. As part of the Bass Connections program, the project brought together Duke students with researchers from multiple fields to conduct real research on contemporary questions. Students helped develop research questions, created survey questions, and analyzed the survey data, gaining skills in research methods and data analysis.

Under the banner of the Bass Connections program, the project collected a series of pilot surveys during the 2016-2017 academic year. We surveyed incoming Duke freshmen who identified as Catholic in the fall of 2016 and followed up with them in the spring of 2017. We also surveyed Catholic sophomores, juniors, and seniors in the spring of 2017.

By the fall of 2017, we were ready to expand the data collection to our seven partner schools across the US. Again, we surveyed incoming freshmen in the fall of 2017 and again in the spring of 2018, and surveyed sophomores, juniors, and seniors in the spring of 2018. Overall, we’ve collected data on over 1,000 students.

In May 2018, we completed our second and final year as a Bass Connections project, but are continuing data collection as a standalon research project.