Investigating cooperative religious education empirically

A review of existing designs, methods, and instruments

Abstract

The empirical study of cooperative religious education is subject to the usual methodological standards of empirical research. This article therefore examines both the designs and the qualitative and quantitative methods of existing studies on this form of religious education. It becomes clear that both simple and complex research designs are used, without a systematic connection to the state of art of research in empirical educational research being discernible. Regarding the methods, a trend from an emphasis on qualitative methods to an emphasis on quanti­tative methods can be noted, which corresponds to the state of art in researching religious education. Particularly in the case of quantitative methods, the desideratum of psychometrically validated instruments and designs emerg­es, which allow for more complex evaluation procedures that have become common in educational research.