The Nourishing Vocation Project focuses on churches wanting to discover more about their own communities and the diverse lives people experience. Outside of academia, there is a lot of difficulty accessing parameters on how to do ethical, meaningful, and representative research. This project seeks to provide congregations with infographics focusing on various research methods to highlight the advantages and disadvantages of each. Congregations will use their resources to conduct their own research moving forward following these tutorials. 

This website guides you through the ethics, methods, and considerations needed to navigate conducting research within your own community.

Ethics Standards guides you through the important ethical standards to consider when doing research with community partners.

Who is an Immigrant? details different legal statuses held by immigrants in the U.S.

Focus Groups, Interviews, and Surveys explain three research methods and how to do each one. What Kind of Research Should I Use? compares the advantages and disadvantages of these three research methods.

Learn More directs you to university research guides to start looking for information beyond this project.

Erica Collin, Grace Klinefelter, and Zoe Parish are students at St. Olaf College majoring in Political Science. In a collaboration with the Nourishing Vocation Project, we have created this website in hopes of assisting congregations in researching their own communities.

For further inquiries, please contact:

Charlene Cox: cox11@stolaf.edu

Katherine Tegtmeyer Pak: ktp@stolaf.edu