By Camille Cox | Staff Writer
Partnering with Harvard University, Baylor University announced the largest research initiative of its kind called The Global Flourishing Study, which is a five-year project that will measure the factors of human flourishing and is set to be a $43.3 million plan.
Lori Fogleman, assistant vice president of media and relations, introduced the project on Oct. 22 at the press conference.
“At Baylor, this is the largest funded research project in the university’s history, so it is a historic day here at Baylor, and it’s a major landmark in Baylor’s pursuit of preeminence as a Christian research university,” Fogleman said.
Fogleman said The Global Flourishing Study will involve 240,000 individuals globally.
“Joint support from a consortium of funders was needed to make The Global Flourishing Study financially viable,” Fogleman said. “That includes support from the John Templeton Foundation, The Templeton Religion Trust, The Templeton World Charity Foundation, The Fetzer Institute, the Paul Foster Family Foundation, The Wellbeing for Planet Earth Foundation, Wellbeing Trust and the David and Carol Myers Foundation. We are deeply grateful for each one and their support of The Global Flourishing Study.”
President Linda Livingstone spoke at the press conference, detailing her excitement for the partnership to advance Baylor’s strategic plans as a university.
“We are in the midst of a strategic plan called Illuminate that is about us becoming among the top research universities in the country while ensuring the integrity of our Christian mission,” Livingstone said. “One of the four pillars of that strategic plan is to enhance the impact, the breadth and the depth of the research that we do on this campus, and we have five signature academic initiatives within that strategic plan, one of which is ‘Human Flourishing, Leadership and Ethics,’ so this study fits perfectly into the work we’re doing.”
According to Baylor Public Relations, “this effort includes the data collection and management expertise of Gallup and the stakeholder coordination and open science leadership of the Center for Open Science.”
Dr. Byron Johnson — project director, distinguished professor of the social sciences and director of the Institute for Studies of Religion at Baylor — said the project began as a conversation of whether a study of this size and magnitude was possible.
“We began to ask the question, ‘Is it possible to do something that we really haven’t done before? Is it possible that we could do something globally across the country … that we haven’t had the ability to do before that would allow us to cover different religious traditions?'” Johnson said. “Most of the research is in the West most specifically here in the U.S.”
Dr. Tyler VanderWeele, project co-director and director of the Human Flourishing Program at Harvard, said the project went through several stages to come to life.
“We’ll be looking at multiple domains of human life, ranging from happiness and life satisfaction to physical and mental health, meaning and purpose, character and virtue, close social relationships and financial and material stability,” VanderWeele said.
Johnson said the project’s data collection will kick off after the first of the year.
“If all goes well, we will have data August/September,” Johnson said. “We’ll be teed up and ready to go analyze data once we get it. And working with our friends Center for Open Science — what a huge, huge blessing that is because people from everywhere will want to have access to it.”
