PILGRIMS' PROGRESS RESEARCH PROJECT NEWS UPDATES
Watch this space!
July 24, 2008: Stage II of the research project has just been completed:
August 14, 2008: July 1, 2008: May 30, 2008: Preliminary report on survey is sent to WYD Administration. May 15, 2008:
This stage consisted of participant observation and interviews during the week of events leading up to the climactic Papal Mass on the final Sunday of the World
Youth Day celebrations. The team, expanded to twelve members for this week by the inclusion of international and local collaborators, travelled to Sydney and attended all of the WYD events with their eyes and ears open. It turned
out to be quite difficult to conduct interviews at any real depth with pilgrims during the event, but the team gathered a mass of data from observation and informal conversations. They are at present collating this material. And to
conclude this phase, they will be present in the coming weeks at debriefing sessions for returned groups, and will conduct interviews with selected pilgrims, so as to check their observations against pilgrims' accounts of their own experience.
Finally, in Stage III of the project, early in 2009, when Catholic life has returned to a more normal pace, those who attended will be invited to share their reflections on their experience via a second internet survey.
The WYD08 "Have Your Say" survey closed Thursday 15th after 2 weeks online.
More than 9,000 pilgrims completed the entire survey, and another 3,000 provided partial, but still valuable feedback. People also sent back lots of additional comments in email form. Some of these were queries
about how to connect with the survey -- these were answered by the Help team at Australian Survey Research, the firm that mounted the survey on the internet and hosted it on its servers.
Other emails expressed additional suggestions for WYD events, which were immediately forwarded to the relevant WYD department. And there were comments and queries about the format and content of the "Have your Say" survey
itself. These were forwarded to the research team, and we were particularly grateful to those who took the trouble to write. We answered all of these -- providing additional information about the survey, explaining the reasons for
particular questions, or how the data is kept securely anonymous.
May 2, 2008: Press release: Study is discovering what young people are hoping for from World Youth Day
More than 200,000 pilgrims from 180 countries will be attending World
Youth Day in Sydney in July. Held every three years, World Youth Day is the largest youth event in the world and Australia is hosting it this year. World Youth Day Pilgrims will be participating in a week-long series of events, festivals
and celebrations, culminating in a Mass celebrated by Pope Benedict XVI. WYD08 is expected to attract more international visitors than the 2000 Sydney Olympics. What are young people hoping for from this major event? High on the
priority list for many of the World Youth Day Pilgrims are: seeing the Pope, feeling part of a huge crowd united by shared beliefs and learning more about their faith. Few, it seems, are going just to sightsee or party or just to
experience the 'buzz' of being at a big youth event. Pilgrims are also expecting that going to WYD will help them find a stronger sense of Catholic identity and a greater commitment to their faith. Interestingly, it appears the event is
drawing quite a number of young people who have not been much involved with their church in recent years. These are some of the findings coming from the first phase of a multi-stage study of World Youth Day Pilgrims.
A team from Australian Catholic University and Monash University is conducting this research, which involves face-to-face interviews and one of the largest online surveys ever conducted in Australia. In-depth interviews have been
conducted with teenagers from schools, with university students and those in the workforce. The online component opened May 2nd with more than 160,000 intending pilgrims invited to have their say about WYD08, sharing why they are coming, what
they hope for, and details about their style of spirituality.