The effects of exposure to traumatic events in missionary children upon their spirituality as adult Missionary Kids living in their country of passport

There are four sub-groups of Global Nomads, one of which is Missionary Kids (MKs). These adult MKs returning to their country of passport are a valuable asset to the church, yet some do and some do not become members of the local community of faith. The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship of exposure to trauma as a missionary child to the adult missionary kid's psychological and spiritual well-being living in one's country of passport. A random group of adult MKs completed the Trauma History Questionnaire (Green 1998) as a screening tool. Those MKs that answered positively were assigned to the study group and those who responded negatively were assigned to the control group for comparative purposes. All participants completed the Impact of Event-Revised Scale (Weiss & Marmar 1995) to determine current level of psychological and emotional well-being. The shortened version of the Faith Maturity Scale (Benson & Donahue 1993) was completed for spirituality. A Background Information Form containing a Likert scale was completed for normative, descriptive data, and to determine whether subjects requested counselling support upon return to their country of passport. Using the Statistical Analysis System Software Version 9.1 summary statistics were calculated for data, using the Kruskal-Wallis t test to determine differences between the study group and control group, p-value <0.05. Associations between variables were determined using the Fisher's Exact Test, p-value <0.05. Significant differences between the control group and study group were observed for the number of times moved: control group = 4.8 0.9 and study group = 9.0 0.9, p-value = 0.02 using the Kruskal-Wallis t test. For the Intrusion Subscale on the Impact of Event-Revised Scale, control group = 14.7 1.09 and the study group = 23.93 1.09, p-value = 0.049. No other significant differences were observed for any variables in the study. These data are preliminary data providing indicators for further study. Factors explaining lack of significance in the variables were the small sample size and validity of the Faith Maturity Scale. Further study is needed using a larger number of subjects. Based on the review of literature, further research is recommended using MKs living in their host country, MKs not appearing on any distribution list and MKs not actively involved in a faith community. There is a need for longitudinal study concerning MKs residing in their country of passport.