Research is incredibly important in life. It is also an important area of my training and teaching. I am especially delighted when my students take up a research project, whether or not I am directly involved. But I enjoy mentoring students in this area, as well as teaching those who are planning a research study.

I did my first "research study" of churches about forty years ago, which involved the comparison of church services in more than 100 churches in the Jackson, Michigan area over a one-year period. Still a teenager at the time, I carefully tracked many aspects of the services using self-made data sheets. Unfortunately all of the data and analysis has been lost, but it was an interesting experience that shaped me significantly both in terms of doing research and in my understanding of the Christian faith.

Just a note about the new Transforming Research web site that is still in the making. There is a double meaning to the phrase "transforming research." In one sense it speaks of the need to transform research so that can resonate and even integrate with an epistemology that allows for spirituality rather than a purely naturalistic base, and transforming research so that spirituality and divinity infuse the research process. Secondly, it speaks of the capacity of research to transform us in significant ways. James Loder was particulaly able to describe the transformative process aptly, distinguishing transformation in the more general sense with spiritual transformation. I hope there will be time in the future to develop this web site further.

You may access a wide variety of resources by using the tabs at the top of this page. You may also want to click on "Don" in the left column to locate details about my own research.

Don Ratcliff interviewing children for his dissertation research