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Research Paper based on Chapel Programs research at APU...

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Market Research and Analysis of Azusa Pacific University’s Chapel Program

Valerie Barrera Moreno, Miku Ramirez, and Maddy Funk Fall 2019 Marketing Research Professor Robbins Azusa Pacific University

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Table of Contents Executive Summary

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Introduction - Milestone One Background Problem Research Objectives Constructs

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Methodology - Milestone 2 Sampling Design Research Design Data Collection Data Analysis Limitations

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Findings - Milestone 3 Findings/ Constructs

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Correlations - Milestone 4 Linear Regression Multiple Linear Regression Construct Correlation

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Conclusions Summary Recommendation

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References

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Appendices

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Executive Summary Azusa Pacific University is a private Christian University that was founded in 1899. Built on their motto, “God First”, APU has built a foundation upon four cornerstones: Christ, Scholarship, Community, Service. In order to implement Christ and their cornerstones, chapel is a co-curricular learning requirement for all undergraduate students. Chapel is a space where students gather together for a consistent, rhythm of corporate worship. It is designed to be a space where spiritual formation and growth occurs, but not a replacement for church. Currently, APU requires all full-time undergraduate students to attend chapel three times a week as it is an essential aspect of attending school here. However, as students, it can be difficult to attend chapel three times a week because of other commitments like work, classwork, internships, etc. This market research analysis examines both the student’s and staff’s opinions about chapel and draws the correlations between the various constructs used. Some of these constructs include demographics, opinions, incentives for why students attend chapel, and reason for why they do not attend chapel. In order to analyze the behavior and attitude students have towards the chapel program, we created a survey through Google Docs and sent the survey link to 100+ students. That included freshmen, sophomores, juniors, and seniors, as well as some student-athletes. We also performed computer-assisted surveys, meaning we sat on campus and had students take the survey on our laptop. After collecting about 85 responses, we performed various correlations.

Introduction

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Milestone One I.

Background According to Azusa Pacific’s policy, chapel is considered a critical part of the university’s

experience and is a co-curricular learning requirement for all full-time undergraduate students. As a Christian university, this program strives to create an environment where students can come together to worship and honor God, as well as grow in their faith. Offering five to six different experiences per week, full-time students are required to attend at least three of these offered. Students are able to petition their chapel requirements based on employment or commuting miles, meaning they can file a petition with the office of corporate worship and request to not be required to attend chapel for a specific reason. However, for those required to attend chapel three times a week, it is sometimes difficult and time consuming for some full-time students because they may have other commitments such as work or classwork. II.

Problem There is a problem with the overall structure of Azusa Pacific’s chapel program and the

office of corporate worship. After attending this university for the past three years, we have begun to see the various problems and issues that arise from the program’s requirements. We believe this program affects not only the students required or not required to attend but the school as well. III.

Research Objectives ● To determine why college students are required to go to chapel three times a week. ● To distinguish the differences in West and East chapel and why students prefer one over the other. ● To identify the incentives that would encourage students to attend chapel.

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● To identify the financial contributions that are going into chapel. ● To create a balance to improve the school finances and student schedules IV.

Constructs ● Location/ Time ○ Do you usually attend east or west chapel on MWF? ■ Students tend to go to chapel on the campus that their classes or on those days ■ If they do not have class, it can be an awkward time ○ What campus chapel do you prefer and why? Morning chapel or night chapel? ■ Morning chapels are preferred for most students, depending on when they have class or are on campus ■ There is more of a variety of speakers in morning chapel ○ Do you like the time for the morning chapel? Why or why not? ■ The time is awkward for some, especially if students do not have class before or after ○ Is there enough time for you to get to class after chapel? ○ Do you like the length of chapel? Should it be shorter/longer? ■ Depends on classes being on opposite campuses ■ Chapel should be earlier on some days for every other day ■ D-groups- count towards chapel requirement ■ Actual church count towards the requirements ● Attendance cards ○ Do you think the attendance cards are convenient?

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■ No, have an app- have you sign in and it monitors phone activity (Not everyone has a smart-phone) ■ Device or scanner to tap your identification card ○ Do you think there is a better way to keep track of who attends chapel? ■ Scanner of IDs- only scan on the way out ○ Should chapel programs get rid of the attendance cards and use the scanner they use at campus events/ games to scan ID cards instead? ○ Do you know what they do with the extra chapel cards? ○ Chapel card monitors should give a warning before taking the chapel card ● Incentives ○ Why do you go to chapel? Is there another reason besides the fact that it is a requirement? ■ Overall opinion is to drop the requirement, more creative way to create a worship space ■ Going as a requirement takes away from wanting to be there, your intent for going changes but overall it takes away from the true purpose of chapel ■ Kaleo is more intimate ■ Morning chapels- you are focused on the day and stressed, rushed to get things done ■ Night chapel are more of a time to destress and decompress ○ Do you feel like chapel programs is a good space to worship? ■ Does it feel forced

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○ Do you feel like it is worth your time? ■ Morning chapel- more convenient, less intimate ○ Would a two chapel requirement be better than three? Why? ■ 2 week or a set amount per semester, “quota” ■ Have 3 blocked out but only have a 2 day requirement ■ Commuters and athletes should have a 2 week requirement ● Other Commitments ○ Are you an athlete? ■ More commitments, less free time for chapel ○ Do you have a job during chapel times? ○ Do you feel like you have options to make up chapels when you can not make it to one? ● Finances ○ Why is senior chapel every other week/ why is there no more band on East chapel ○ How much are the chapel attendance cards? ○ How much does it cost to host a chapel? Morning/ night chapels ○ Do you think APU should invest the money they use to pay for the attendance cards for something else? ● Demographics ○ How old are you? ○ What is your academic standing? (freshman, sophomore, junior, or senior) ■ Upperclassmen tend to have more commitments such as work

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○ Are you a commuter (living at home), living off-campus (with roommates), or on-campus? ■ Commuters- going home makes it harder to have to come back for chapel ■ Morning chapel is easier for commuters if they have class ○ Do you have a religious background? If so, what is it?

Methodology Milestone Two V.

Sampling Design Our sample was taken through surveys via Google Survey. We sent the survey link to

about 100+ students, which included freshmen, sophomores, juniors, and seniors. We also performed computer-assisted surveys where we sat on campus and had students take our survey on our laptops. The survey included questions about the students - their demographics, what their

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opinion on chapel is, and questions on different aspects of the chapel program. Some of the questions were measured based off a scale if they strongly agree or strongly disagree. For our surveys, we decided to ask about 20 to 25 students per class standing. Out of those 20-25 students, we asked about 5 commuters from each class and about 15 student-athletes in total. We had a larger pool of students from each class because we knew how class and work schedules differ based on a number of different factors such as the student's academic year, if they are student-athletes or not, whether they live on or off-campus, and if they have other commitments. VI.

Research Design For our project, we used exploratory research to conduct our study. Through this type of

research, we gained further background information about the chapel program and the Office of Corporate Worship. We scheduled a meeting with one of the directors of the office, gained more information and clearly defined some aspects of chapel. We wanted to hear about the purpose of chapel from their perspective, in person. Furthermore, when we released those surveys to the students, we were able to clearly identify the problems students have towards the chapel program and were able to establish our research priorities. Before releasing the surveys, we used a focus group in class to gain information from a small group before releasing the surveys in order to get some feedback from the APU students in our class. VII.

Data Collection Our data collection included utilizing different methods. We primarily collected data

through our survey. We had a predesigned questionnaire with about 20-25 questions that answered our questions and proved our hypothesis about the problem facing this program. Our first method was to simply create the survey itself and tailor the questions for the students. We

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created the survey via Google Surveys and shared it on our social media sites, encouraging students to take this survey. Secondly, we collected data through computer-assisted surveys; we sat in a public area on campus such - cougar walk- and asked students some of our survey questions and record their answers on our computers, or we simply allowed them to take the survey from our laptops. Lastly, we collected data from the in-office interview with the director of the Office of Corporate Worship. During this interview, we spoke with the director and discussed several aspects of the office such as their finances, their requirements, and their purpose behind chapel. VIII.

Data Analysis The data we collected for this project was our survey responses. We analyzed our data in

our group and determined what the majority of the responses were. We interpreted the data by both observing the respondents and analyzing what people said on the surveys about the chapel program at APU. We used both indirect and direct observation methods in our data analysis. We observed the student's behavior as we asked them questions as well as observed the results of the behavior rather than the behavior itself, meaning we observed how the students reacted to their reactions to our questions. During our focus group, we noticed that some students were surprised at some of our questions and that they had never thought about that prior to our questions. We also used prescriptive analysis. The purpose of prescriptive analytics is to prescribe what actions to take to eliminate a future problem. We plan on showing the office of Corporate Worship our results and data so that they are aware of this issue in hopes that they may take action to improve their program by possibly reducing the requirements. IX.

Limitations Some of our limitations include not getting as many students to take our survey as we

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planned. We hoped to ask about 20-25 students per year, meaning we tried to ask 20-25 freshmen, 20-25 sophomores, 20-25 juniors, and 20-25 seniors. Of those 20-25 students for each grade, we hoped to ask about 5 commuters from each grade. With that, another limitation is that we cannot account for every student here at APU and this may not be an accurate representation of the APU population. Other limitations of our research included not getting enough information from Chapel Programs. For example, there were some topics or data that they could not expose to us, including the financial aspects of chapel and APU as a whole.

Findings Milestone Three X.

Findings

Construct 1: Demographics Question 1: What is your major? Purpose: The purpose of asking students their major is to see if there is a correlation between the amount of coursework that is required for different majors and attendance. We want to see whether or not students with certain majors are least likely to attend chapel.

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Findings: We found that the majority of respondents have Business related majors (22 out of 85) and Kinesiology majors (18 out of 85). The rest of the majors are less than 10% of the data.

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Question 2: Where do you live? Purpose: The purpose of asking where students live is to determine if those who live on-campus are more likely to attend chapel more frequently than those who live off-campus. We also wanted to determine if the location of their housing also affects their chapel attendance. Findings: We found that the majority of respondents live off-campus (32 out of 85). The other respondents either live in the dorms (13), UP (12), or UV (16). The mods, alosta, and bowles were our lowest data collection.

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Question 3: Do you have a religious background? Purpose: The purpose of finding out student’s religious backgrounds is to see the relationship between those who have a religious background and how they view chapel on a Chrisitan college campus. We also wanted to see how many students on campus are Christian to see if chapel programs should offer more variety. Findings: We found that 76 students of the respondents are Christian and 9 are Catholic and 1 has no religion.

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Construct 2: Other Commitments Question 4: Are you an athlete? Purpose: The purpose of this question is to see if athletes their schedule is busy from academics and sports and to evaluate how that affects their attendance in chapel. Findings: We found that 66 students were not athletes and 18 were athletes.

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Question 6: Do you have a job? (either on campus or off campus) Purpose: The purpose of this question is to determine how many students have a job commitment along with academics and extracurriculars. Findings: From our findings, 52 students do have jobs and 33 do not.

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Question 7: Does your job require you to work during chapel times? Purpose: The purpose of this question is to evaluate the amount of students that have to work during chapel times and are not able to attend the morning or night chapels. Findings: 59 students say their job does not require them to work during chapel times, while 29 have work during chapel.

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Question 8: Do you have other commitments during chapel? Purpose: The purpose of this question is to determine the amount of students who have other commitments that are not limited to jobs, and analyze the amount of students who cannot make it to chapel due to other commitments. Findings: 70.2% of the population stated that homework was the biggest outside commitment, then work coming next at 23.4% for work.

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Construct 3: Incentives Question 5: Would it be fair for student athletes to be required to only go to chapel 2x a week? Purpose: The purpose of this question is to see how much of the student population believes that balancing sports and academics can interfere and make a three chapel requirement hard to achieve. Findings: We found that 52 students of the population found it fair for student-athletes to only be required to attend chapel twice a week instead of three times and 33 students found it to be unfair.

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Question 9: Do you feel like you have options to make up chapels when you are unable to attend the morning times? Purpose: The purpose of this question was to find out if chapel was giving out a variety of options for students with prior commitments. We want to see if each student believes they could fulfill the three chapel requirements. Findings: From our findings, 41 students say that they do not have enough options and 43 say they do.

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Question 17: Why do you go to chapel? Pick 2 Purpose: The purpose of this question was to find the reasoning of why students attend chapel, whether that be because of friends, worship, sermons, or because it is a requirement. Findings: 74 students say because it is a requirement, 49 students go to chapel for worship, 15 for the sermons, 25for their friends, and 5 for other.

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Question 18: Do you feel like chapel programs provides a good space to worship? Purpose: The purpose of this question is to find out if chapel serves its’ purpose for the students, finding out if they are able to worship comfortably. Findings: The majority answered yes (69) and the rest answered no (15).

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Question 19: Would a two chapel requirement be better than three? Purpose: The purpose of this question is to see if students would prefer a two week chapel requirement instead of three. Findings: The majority responded yes to this question (79) and only 6 of the respondents responded no.

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Construct 4: Location and Time Question 10: If you attend morning chapel, which do you attend? Purpose: The purpose of this question was to find out which campus the student population visits more often. This can show us the convenience or interest of either campus. Findings: 44 students attend the West morning chapel and 31 students attend East morning chapel, while the rest do not attend morning chapel at all.

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Question 11: Which chapel do you prefer? Purpose: The purpose of this question was to find out if students prefer morning or night chapel to show us the convenience or interest of the students. Findings: 35 students prefer to attend night chapel and 50 prefer to attend morning.

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Question 12: Do you like the time for morning chapel? 10:30-11:20am Purpose: The purpose of this question was to determine if students find the morning chapel to be convenient for them. This will tell us if the time of chapel is a factor to the attendance. Findings: 70 students say they do like the time of morning chapel and 15 say they do not.

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Question 13: Is there enough time for you to get to class after chapel? Purpose: The purpose of this question was to see if students feel like they have enough time after chapel because they are only given 15 minutes to travel from campus to campus. Findings: 25 of the students believe they do not have enough time to get to class and 70 believe they do.

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Question 14: Do you like the overall length of chapel? Purpose: The purpose of this question was to see if the length of chapel was in favor for the students. Findings: 48 stated they do not like the 50 minute length and 37 stated they do.

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Construct 5: Attendance Cards Question 15: Do you think chapel programs should get rid of the attendance cards and use the scanner used at campus events/games to scan ID cards instead? Purpose: The purpose of this question was to see if students would find scanning ID’s would save money and time for Chapel programs and convenience for students. Findings: 68 students believe we should inv...