If religious leaders understand why people turn to religion they can develop methods to keep followers religious. Also, if the factors causing the turn to religion are positive then these can be used as a method to draw people to the religion. The method to find this information does not need to be very complex. To begin with a simple questionnaire can help us determine which people are the most significant to study. Since we are looking for what drove a person to do what they are doing it may not be useful to focus on people who have always been the same.
Further testing can include previously constructed personality tests.
Perhaps the people who we have come to study all have an underlying personality trait that can explain or at least indicate their reason for pursuing these things. Interviews will be a necessity due to the fact that much of this information may be personal in nature and may come more willingly through the human contact. The sample can be based around the Yeshiva University community. After all there has been a common trend of people who have become more religious during their year in Israel. That is exactly the phenomena we would like to explore.