Funded Research
Developing Planning and Educational Resources: Extending the Outreach of ARDA
Source: Lilly Endowment Inc.
Active: 07/01/2009 - 06/30/2013
Investigator(s):
Roger Finke
Since going online in 1998, the American Religion Data Archive (ARDA) has expanded from a data repository for researchers to a prized and popular tool for religion educators and church leaders. During the last three years alone, the number of visitors per day has more than doubled from 1,339 to 2,763. Although we propose to continue serving educators, researchers, and church leaders, we want to extend our outreach to local congregations. Thus, we will continue archiving and disseminating the best data on American religion and will continue to support learning modules, memberships reports and maps, graphical presentations of denominational heritage and trends, and our many other online features. But we are now proposing the development of congregational planning tools that allow for customized demographic reports and a public opinions feature that allows clergy and others to quickly find survey results on their topics of interest. New partnerships, new sources of data, and new website developments will allow us to extend our outreach.
