W3 Reading

IDENTIFYING THE ESSENTIAL QUESTIONS FOR SUCCESSFUL MINISTRY WITH CATHOLIC YOUTH

By: Charoltte McCorquodale & Leigh Sterten*

Charoltte and Leigh used the same NSYR research findings that Sharon Ketcham did but analyzed the data with a focus on Catholic youth. Her analysis showed that there is a disconnect between how Catholic youth verbalize the importance of their faith and how they live it out with regards to their church attendance. One of her key points was that youth programs are typically separate from adult programs. She believes that this disconnect is creating part of the problem because youth do not feel connected to the adult way of worship. Her conclusion was that this was because adults are no longer as engaged in their faith as they had been in the past and that youth engagement was a reflection of parent engagement.

Has Facebook Finally Figured Out Privacy?

By: Ian Paul

Ian Paul examined the new privacy settings that Facebook implemented. He reviewed each of the three changes made and noted that the Center for Democracy and Technology heralded Facebook for their privacy changes. The changes involved were: the ability to create a group and allow only those in the group certain privileges, the ability to download all your personal data, photos, and videos onto your computer via a zip-file, and the ability to see how 3^rd party group are accessing your personal data. Ian believed that these changes would help alleviate the concerns that people have with privacy on Facebook.

Is There Social Capital in a Social Network Site?: Facebook Use and College Students’ Life Satisfaction, Trust, and Participation

By: Sebastian Valenzuela

Sebasian Valenzuela studied the relationship between college Facebook users and their happiness, trust, and civic and political participation. His study included a random sample of students from two different Texas colleges. Upon analyzing his results, he concluded that social network users did not have a withdrawal from society like cyberpessimists suggest. In fact, the opposite was true. However, there was no statistical significance in the difference between life satisfaction and trust between users and non-users of social networks. There did happen to be a relationship between increased civic and political engagement and the use of Facebook groups. While this relationship exists, the author suggests that the correlation was not strong enough to suggest that this could be a means to increase social engagement.

Quality with Soul: How Six Premier Colleges and Universities Keep Faith with Their Religious Traditions.

By: Lee Canipe

Lee Canipe reviews a study completed by Robert Benne on religious institutions. The study took place at many colleges and institutions of higher learning all across the country. Benne was trying to determine if it was possible for religiously affiliated institutions to maintain their religious beliefs while still demanding academic excellence. His conclusion was that there are not many religious institutions that do this effectively. He states that non-religious ideas can compromise the mission of religious colleges. His encouragement was that there are a few institutions that regularly review their content and compare it with the teachings of the gospel to ensure that all content areas are faith-referenced. These institutions can be models for others that want to get back to their faith-based roots.