Research Propectus

Abstract
This prospectus will give an overview of my plans to do field research in Second Life. The main focal point will be on a virtual Christian church. It will show what it does and how effective it actually is in spreading faith to more people as well as developing faith in those who already believe. This prospectus will talk about what Second Life is, what I want to do, who I plan on targeting to get the research I seek, and positives and negatives in this research.
Introduction: Research Problem
Second Life is a virtual world where people can, as the name suggests, live another life. People can create an avatar, a virtual person, and can make them look however one would want them to look. One can choose everything about the avatar from the sex, height, body size, clothes, etc. If someone choose to, they could also choose to be a furry, an animal. People can buy all kinds of things in Second Life using Lindens, the currency for Second Life. Some of these things include clothes, animations, houses, furniture, among many other things. The person can also participate in all kinds of activities and experiences. Just about anything that one can do in real life; one can do in Second Life. Live music, games, and dancing are some of the more popular activities that people take part in.
I want to focus on studying Christian religion in a virtual world. I would like to see what people do and how effective it is in starting and developing their faith in this kind of environment. Religion being a highly relational experience, how effective can it be over a computer connection. Could it actually be better for some people in this kind of environment? I will go to the services that are held on Sundays as well as participate in other activities like small group discussions and bible studies when possible to see additional interactions.
Method
I want to be a participant-observer in as many activities as a can. This will be especially important in the small groups to build trust and be able to get the kind of information that would be helpful in this research. It would be hard to be able to ask people about their faith if I am a complete stranger to them. The closer I can get to people, the more truthful and deeper answers I can get. All of the identities of the people and places I research will be protected by changing all the names so they cannot be confused with who they are in real life or Second Life. I really hope to get close to a few people to get the information I need. I do not need a lot of people but I would like to have about five to get a good sample if at all possible. I would want to get people who are in various places in their spiritual journey to hopefully get a better gauge on how much this kind of environment really helps. It is really hard to tell how long it would take to get some of this information. It would probably take a lot of in world time to get this information but it would also take a lot of real world time to analyze it all. I would approximate about half the weeks available in real life and half the weeks in Second life but that could very well need to change as time progresses with the project. Outside research would have to focus on Christian religion and practices and the relationships that are created in that.
Potential Limitations
The limitations I face would definitely be the ability to get information from people. Religion and faith can be a very guarded thing for a lot of people and as such can make it very hard for people to be willing to talk about it. Not all people are willing to tell other people about their faith and the current state it is in and how it is progressing. It would also be hard, if I can get that information from them, to measure the effectiveness of this virtual church on their faith and how much it may progress or regress. Faith is a very hard thing to quantify and measure. Also it would be hard to get people to articulate their true faith. Some, especially in a church kind of environment, may embellish the truth so they do not seem like a horrible person. Also some people may not be able to describe how they feel and what they see as the “Truth” let alone how a virtual church may help that grow or not. It can be very easy to miss a lot of very important details because the people may not even know the details about themselves. There are self truths that can take a lot of time to get exposed to people and some may not have experienced what they need yet to learn those truths.
Discussion
This research aims fill in a lot of gaps on information about virtual churches. These kinds of digital churches are very new, especially in worlds like Second Life, so there is not much information about them at this present time and how much they can truly help people. This project can possibly help the church be more effective to those who use it and help the people who use it to have a deeper experience because of the effectiveness. We might be able to better understand how religion will evolve in virtual world.