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A Delphi Study Defining Catholic Identity in American Diocesan Catholic Higher Education

Year: 2024
Type: article
Abstract: Over the past 60 years, there have been general comments and outcry that Catholic higher education schools simply are not Catholic enough anymore. The concern about the lack of identity started with the decline in ordained leadership and mounting pressures to compete with secular institutions. To measure if Catholic identity has declined, a working definition of Catholic identity is needed. This study employed the Delphi methodology to define Catholic identity among a subset of Catholic higher education institutions—diocesan-sponsored schools. The primary research question was how the identified schools defined Catholic identity, with subquestions that included who was responsible for the delivery of the identity and how this was delivered. The chief mission officers on each campus were identified and surveyed electronically to achieve consensus on what attributes of Catholic identity were actively practiced on campus. The researcher identified 10 mission officers, and nine participated in the study. After three rounds of Likert-scale questions with open-ended response options, the group reached a consensus to provide evidence to support the scaled responses in this Delphi study. The results of this study indicate that Catholic identity at diocesan-sponsored schools is strongly correlated to the care of and for the campus community, both internally and externally. The responsibility to deliver on this institutional mission is the responsibility of all members of the internal campus community, from the leadership to the student body. Establishing a Catholic identity definition on these campuses will aid these specific institutions in creating rubrics to measure the success of mission delivery and Catholic identity understanding on their respective campuses. This format could also be applied to other Christian higher education institutions aiming to create a shared definition to measure this respective identity matrix on their campuses.
Author: Grooms, Katherine E.
Language: English
Subfield: History
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7018383151
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