Background

In early 2001, the Squamish United Church Board decided to initiate a long-term planning process.  As a first step, they wanted to develop a sense of how the congregation likes to worship, and to find out what type of worship activities the congregation would like to have provided in the years to come.

Please note that the changes to the Annex, church kitchen and sound system had not yet been made at the time of this survey.

Survey Purpose and Objectives

As part of the Board’s long-term planning process, a survey of people who attend the Squamish United Church was created.  The questionnaire was designed to be a “needs assessment” for church activities.  More specifically, the objectives were structured to develop an understanding of the:

• Activities that the congregation participates in now and the place in which they would like these activities to occur
• Interest in new activities and where they would like these activities to occur
• Interest in youth activities and where youth would like these activities to occur
• Interest in having the Squamish United Church lead or assist in Outreach programmes and where they would like these activities to occur
• Attitude towards permitting non-profit community groups to meet in Squamish United Church facilities on a minimal rent basis.  Ideas for potential community group use were also requested.
• Attitude towards renting newly built space to community organizations
• Respondent demographics

Note:  When creating the new programme options, highly requested programmes from a previous survey were used as the base and then additions were made to reflect popular Christian programme offerings in other churches.

Methodology

Due to the small size of the church congregation (compared to typical research sample sizes of 400), an attempt was made to reach as many of these people as possible.  Two congregational members went to all the monthly church group meetings to explain the survey objectives, distribute the questionnaires and answer questions about the survey.  This technique was used for contact with the United Church Board of Directors, Men’s Breakfast Group, Choir, UCW Groups and congregation seniors at Hilltop House.  In addition, announcements were made during every Sunday service in June explaining the survey process.  The announcements also encouraged people that weren’t members of the above groups to obtain a survey from designated members.

There were 70 people that completed a questionnaire, which is a fairly high response rate when considering that there are approximately 100 active members of the Squamish United Church.  The range of error of 70 respondents (as taken from a small sample base) is approximately +/- 6% (i.e. when you read that 20% of the respondents have participated in Church Study Groups, in reality if this survey were administered on 10 different occasions this particular percentage would range from 14% to 26%).

The questionnaire was pre-tested on five members prior to being distributed.
 

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