Tracking Faith: A Statistical Analysis of the Spiritual Profiles of Chicago and Dallas over the Last 15 Years

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This project explored the question of whether the spiritual profiles of the Chicago and Dallas markets have changed significantly over the last 15 years and if those spiritual profiles differ significantly from each other. The Barna Group is a market research firm that has tracked the role of faith in America for over 30 years. This project is the extension of work done during an internship with the Barna Group in Summer 2014, and their extensive database was made available for this research. Regression and comparative means analysis were performed on the responses to 22 survey questions that were asked to over 2600 participants from 1999-2014. It was discovered that several statistically significant trends have occurred in the spiritual profiles of Chicago and Dallas during this 15 year span. The results suggest that faith engagement and Christian spirituality in Chicago have been on the decline, with both cities showing a noticeable drop particularly over the last two years. Furthermore, a number of faith aspects were found to be different between the Chicago and Dallas markets at a statistically significant level, suggesting that faith engagement is in fact higher in Dallas, as a part of the “Bible-belt”, than in Chicago.