Missionary Member Care:
What People Want to Know
Ronald Koteskey
New Hope International Ministries
Abstract
This paper proposes a way to gather information about caring for missionaries around
the world and uses this new method as a way to find out what missionaries and
other people want to know about member care. The method is to analyze the
data gathered as missionaries and others visit a member care website. The
two specific types of data considered here are (1) what people type into search
engines and (2) what topics they visit on a website after they arrive.
Some limitations of this approach are discussed.
Member care professionals have
written materials for other such professionals and missionaries to read.
Marjory Foyle (1997, 2001) titled her books Overcoming Missionary Stress and
Honourably Wounded: Stress among Christian Workers. Esther
Schubert (1993) titled her book What Missionaries Need to Know about Burnout
and Depression. I (Koteskey, 2004) titled many brochures and an
E-book What Missionaries Ought to Know… (about many topics).
Although missionaries and those caring for them may need to know or ought to
know some things, a relevant question is, “What do such people themselves want
to know about missionary member care?” Do they want to know about stress,
burnout, and depression? What else do they want to know? Are member
care professionals saying things that missionaries consider irrelevant, scratching
where they do not itch? This article is about discovering what people
themselves want to know relative to member care.
Member care professionals have studied many facets of missionary life,
especially during the last 15-20 years. A major study about important
topics of member care has appeared on the average of about once a year since
1990 as shown in Table 1. Of course, many additional smaller studies have
appeared as well. During that time thousands of missionaries (5086 in the
15 studies listed in Table 1) have participated in studies of topics ranging
from stress to satisfaction and from attrition to perseverance. This
research has involved missionaries from many different specific groups, such as
married missionaries, female missionaries, missionary families, adult MKs,
denominational missionaries, and missionaries in interdenominational agencies.
|
Table 1
Recent research
studies in member care
(Under Method used,
Q=questionnaire and S=survey)
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Author/ Date
|
Population Sampled
|
N
|
Method Used
|
Topic Studied
|
|
Andrews (1995)
|
Adult MKs
|
608
|
Q/S
|
Well-being
|
|
Andrews (1999)
|
Missionary Families
|
245
|
Q
|
Satisfaction
|
|
Brierly (1997)
|
Missionaries
|
528
|
Q/S
|
Attrition
|
|
Carter (1999)
|
CMA Missionaries
|
306
|
S
|
Stressors
|
|
Coote (1991)
|
Missionaries
|
472
|
Q/S
|
Furloughs
|
|
Crawford (2002)
|
Female Missionaries
|
185
|
Q
|
Relationships
|
|
Gish (1983)
|
Missionaries
|
549
|
Q
|
Stress
|
|
O’Donnell (1995)
|
YWAM missionaries
|
96
|
Q
|
Stressors
|
|
Powell & Andrews (1995)
|
MKs, parents, staff
|
67
|
Q
|
Personnel qualities
|
|
Rosik (1993)
|
Missionaries
|
114
|
Q
|
Counselor preference
|
|
Sharp (1990)
|
Adult MKs
|
533
|
Q
|
World mindedness
|
|
Sweatman (1999)
|
Married Missionaries
|
67
|
Q/S
|
Satisfaction and stress
|
|
Wickstrom & Andrews (1995)
|
Boarding school staff
|
576
|
Q
|
Personality characteristics
|
|
Wilcox (1995)
|
MK school staff
|
394
|
Q
|
Perseverance
|
|
Wrobbel & Plueddemann (1990)
|
Missionaries
|
292
|
S
|
Development
|
Although many different topics and populations have been studied, note that
every study has included a questionnaire or a survey. Researchers gathered
their data using the method of doing a survey by distributing questionnaires
(see Table 1). They called their “instruments” by a variety of names,
such as profiles, rating forms, self-assessment tools, rating scales,
researcher-designed instruments, inventories, and self-report scales—but at
some point in every article the authors themselves called their instruments
either questionnaires or surveys (or both). Even the largest study to be
conducted to date, the ReMap II, used a self-assessment survey. This
study of more than 580 sending agencies in 22 countries having more than 38,000
long-term missionaries with periodic updates are available at www.generatingchange.co.uk.
Ted Ward and John Powell, two patriarchs of the member care movement, expressed
concern about the overuse of surveys. Ward said, “One category I have not
included is survey. I don’t have a lot of patience with surveys.
Someone talked about whether we might wear people out if we do too much
research. Anemic master’s level survey studies have everyone worn out!”
(Ward, 1998, p. 448). Powell said, “Hard empirical research
investigating these variables and their possible influence on MK development
has been sparse….Of the 326 articles, reports, and studies in that collection,
less than a dozen met criteria for solid empirical research with
conceptual development and interpretation. Many were surveys, analyses of
personal anecdotes, and organized observations” (Powell, 1998, p. 437).
A quarter of a century earlier, Derek Phillips wrote an entire book questioning
the basis of the knowledge gained through social research. He summarized
“that most sociological knowledge is based ultimately on people’s reports
of their behavior, rather than on the actual observation of behavior….that
sociologists tend to underestimate the influence of their data-collection
procedures….that there is an overdependence on interviews and questionnaires
and that they are frequently (perhaps usually) utilized in inappropriate
circumstances” (Phillips, 1971. p. 11). Phillips was so concerned about
the validity of such data that he abandoned a book on which he had been working
several months—to write one about his doubts, one titled Knowledge from
What?
Most people who use questionnaires are aware that the wording of the questions
and the order of the questions influence the answers one gets. They may not
be aware that the very act of administering a questionnaire influences the
answers. For example, missionaries may not have member care concerns, but
an open-ended question prods them to think of something to say. That is,
simply asking the question may create additional “needs” rather than just
measuring those already there. Missionaries may have questions about some
serious problem but may be reluctant to write the answer for fear that it will
make them (or their agency) look bad—or for fear that their handwriting will be
recognized even though the survey is “anonymous.” If they are asked
to pick an answer or answers from a provided list, missionaries may pick one
even if they have not really been concerned about it before. For example,
if they see an item about PTSD and CISD, they may pick it because they are
curious about what those letters mean, not because the letters are burning
issues for them.
Data collected through questionnaires assessing what people want to know about
member care has value, but the question of validity still remains. Do
people asking questions about member care in “real life” ask the same questions
as those who fill out questionnaires responding to the “demands” of that
situation? Phillips (1971, p. 124) wrote, “There are, however,
data-collection procedures which attempt to avoid this heavy dependence on
verbal reports.” He went on to discuss unobtrusive measures and
participant observation. Methods such as these could be used to gather
data from a few missionaries in real life, but this provides a very limited
sample. A better method is now available.
Modern technology, especially the Internet, makes it possible to gather data
from large numbers of people in real life without influencing their behavior.
Most missionaries and people interested in member care now have Internet
access. When they want information, they can ask for it by typing their
requests into search engines, such as Google, MSN, and Yahoo. Those
search engines then provide them with links on which they can click to visit
whichever websites they choose from the lists provided by the search
engines. Hosts routinely keep large amounts of data from people visiting
each website, including the exact words or phrases the people have typed into
the search engine as well as complete paths each person took through the site.
Webmasters can access this data and request whatever statistics they desire,
including a complete list of all requests typed into search engines that led to
a particular website. These requests are frequently not “questions” but
are most often a word or a phrase, or just words in a “random” order containing
the “essence” of what the person wants to know. Thus we can look at how
many different requests led to a website, how many times each request was
submitted, even a list of all the requests made. Once individuals enter a
website, we can look at the exact paths they took to explore the website or see
how many times each page on the website was visited.
These data are a rich source for finding what people want to know about member
care. Those who visit a site are not influenced by the “demands” of a
survey but are real people seeking information that is of real importance to
them in the particular situation in which they find themselves. The data
is routinely collected, and all that the researchers have to do is choose what
kind of analysis they want to do. The research reported here is an
analysis of the search phrases that led to a website on missionary member care
as well as an analysis of the particular topics visited.
Method
The data analyzed are from the website www.missionarycare.com,
and cover the first three years it was on the Internet, from November 1,
2003, to October 31, 2006. This website contains three major categories
of content: (1) 45 “brochures” on various topics that may be read online or
downloaded as .pdf files for printing , (2) four books that may be downloaded
in three different formats, and (3) a database of more than 800 published
articles and books which may be searched online or downloaded. All of
these are free of charge. Older versions of this material were previously
posted on the Asbury College website from 1998-2003.
When people typed “missionary care,” “missionary member care,” or “member care”
into the major Internet search engines, www.missionarycare.com
usually appeared on the first page of links. If they clicked on one
of those links and visited the website, their visit would be recorded, along
with exactly what they typed into the search engine. Of course, they
could type whatever they wanted to find, and thousands of different words or
phrases could lead to the website. Since the website includes a database
of hundreds of articles about member care, virtually every topic relevant to
member care is mentioned at the site.
The first kind of data analyzed was the exact phrases that people typed
in. These were the “questions” asked, questions rising out of real life
situations resulting in people actively looking for information. The
statistical package on the website counted how many times each exact word or
phrase was entered. That is “Member Care”, “Member care”, “member care”,
and “member Care” were tallied as four different things in the raw data because
of the different combinations of capitalized letters. Misspelled words
were tallied as separate from the correct spellings. That is “adolesent”
was tallied as different from “adolescent.” The author then had to make
the judgment as to what was really the same. Of course, all four of the
combinations of capitalization above were counted as being the same.
Likewise, both correct and incorrect spellings (if they were obvious) were
counted as being the same.
The second kind of data analyzed were how many times people clicked on each
topic. That is, not only were the visits to the website as a whole tallied, but
so were the visits to each page of the website. Whenever visitors clicked
on the major category “brochures,” they were given a list of 40 topics on which
they could click to view the brochure they wished to read. This was
counted. At that point they could read the brochure on their screen,
print it on their printer, or download it as a .pdf file which could be saved
to their hard drive and/or printed as a four-fold brochure on 8.5 X 14 inch
paper. This was analogous to asking the people already in search of
member care, “Which of these topics would you like to know more about?”
However, rather than being in an artificial situation, these people were in
search of information about issues important to them in their current life
situation.
People could also download four E-books at the website. They could
download the brochures combined to form a 235-page book, What Missionaries
Ought to Know…, an E-book available to anyone anywhere at any time free of
charge. They could also download a 48-page E-book, Coming “Home:” The
Reentry Transition; a179-page E-book for parents, Understanding
Adolescence; and a 148-page E-book for TCKs, Third Culture Kids and
Adolescents: Cultural Creations. These books could be downloaded as
.doc, .pdf, or .zip files. Missionaries paying by the KB were probably
more likely to download the compressed .zip files because they were much
smaller. People downloading them as .pdf files probably wanted a document
that would maintain its formatting to print nicely. People who downloaded
them as .doc files may have wanted a document they could modify or easily print
particular pages.
Results and
Discussion
During this first three years www.missionarycare.com
had 663,621 “page views.” This means that 663,621 “pages” were viewed but
not necessarily that many different people visited the site. For example,
if a person came to the site, read three brochures, and searched the database
for two topics, that is six “page views. This is an average (mean) of
18,434 pages viewed each month.
During the three years 17,001 books were downloaded, an average of 472 each month.
The book most often downloaded (7319) was the more general What Missionaries
Ought to Know About… with fewer of each of the more specialized books about
reentry and adolescence, and TCKs. Of these 17,001 books, 569 were
downloaded as compressed (.zip) files. This could mean people in places
where they paid by the minute to download were using this service.
Exact entered words and/or phrases
Though website was publicized in various ways, 25740
people came to the website by typing words or phrases into Internet search
engines. They asked the search engines to find websites relevant to 3676
different words/phrases the first year, 5935 the second year, and 8484 the
third year. The exact words or phrases typed into the search engines more
than 50 times are shown in Table 2.
|
Table 2
Exact words/phrases
typed into search engines 50 or more times.
|
|
|
|
|
Exact words or phrases
|
Frequencies
|
|
|
|
|
Christian time management
|
562
|
|
missionary care
|
344
|
|
saying goodbye to coworkers
|
164
|
|
missionary attrition
|
140
|
|
sexual stress
|
139
|
|
brochures
|
128
|
|
missionary burnout
|
120
|
|
Nehemiah leadership
|
113
|
|
culture stress
|
101
|
|
missionary reentry
|
88
|
|
member care
|
84
|
|
time management Christian
|
79
|
|
conflict
|
62
|
|
Third Culture Kids
|
60
|
|
Christian anxiety
|
60
|
|
understanding adolescence
|
60
|
|
saying goodbye to co-workers
|
58
|
|
missionary member care
|
57
|
|
Nehemiah’s leadership
|
54
|
Note that several basic themes emerge in Table 2. That is “time management”
occurs in two of the phrases (641 occurrences), “care” occurs in three of the
phrases (485 occurrences), “stress” occurs in two of the phrases (240
occurrences), “saying goodbye” occurs in two of the phrases (222 occurrences),
“leadership” occurs in two of the phrases (167 occurrences), and “missionary attrition”
occurs 140 times.
The word “missionary” is the first word in five of these top 19 words/phrases
typed into the search engines. These requests were certainly typed by
those interested in finding information by or about missionaries. The
requests for information about time management were typed by those looking for
information about Christians, but probably not all by missionaries. The
requests about leadership were typed in by individuals likely familiar with the
Old Testament, as indicated by “leadership” always accompanied by
“Nehemiah.” The requests about saying goodbye could have been typed by
anyone, not just missionaries or Christians.
Table 1 is just the top 19 of a frequency distribution of 3676 words/phrases typed
in during the first year, 5935 words/phrases typed in by people during the
second year, and 8484 the third year. Anyone who would like to see the
complete frequency distribution of all of the words/phrases typed in may visit www.missionarycare.com/missionary_care_data.xls
to download the complete Excel spreadsheet. This is fascinating
reading for anyone interested in missionary member care, and readers can sort
the data in that spreadsheet in other ways to answer other questions they may
have about what people want to know about member care.
Specific words or phrases
We can learn more about what missionaries are asking by counting the total
number of times particular words or phrases occur in searches rather than just
looking at the frequencies of exactly what people typed in. For example,
in Table 2, “Christian time management” and “time management Christian” are
probably synonymous, but they are counted separately because of the different
word orders. Deciding which words should be counted together is a
judgment call, so singular and plural forms of words were grouped and
misspellings (when obvious) were grouped with correct spellings. Table 3
shows how often the most frequent words and phrases occur.
|
Table 3
Words and
phrases typed in 400 or more times.
|
|
|
|
|
Word/phrase
|
Frequency
|
|
|
|
|
missionary, missionaries
|
8838
|
|
Christian, Christianity
|
2900
|
|
culture, cultural, acculturation, multicultural
|
1884
|
|
stress, stressful, stressors
|
1278
|
|
time management
|
1137
|
|
adolesence, adolescence, adolescent, adolescents
|
1107
|
|
goodbye
|
977
|
|
missionary care, missionarycare
|
970
|
|
missionary kid, MK
|
919
|
|
sex, sexual, sexuality, homosexuality
|
831
|
|
reentry, re-entry
|
703
|
|
depression, depressed
|
685
|
|
anxiety
|
641
|
|
member care, membercare
|
496
|
|
burnout
|
419
|
|
leadership
|
407
|
One would expect the most frequent inquiries to be about missionaries,
Christianity, and culture. They were, and nearly 9000 of them actually
included the words missionary or missionaries. The queries about
missionary care and member care are also included in this list. If
readers ignore these five entries (missionary, Christian, culture,
missionarycare, membercare) in the table above, they are left with a list of
the top 11 things people asked about. As noted earlier, interested
persons can download the complete frequency distribution of all 3676 of the
words/phrases typed in the first year, all 5935 typed in the second year, and
all 8484 typed in the third year and find and count the frequencies for any
word or combination of words they wish.
Qualitative data
At least as interesting as the most frequently occurring words are the words
that occur less frequently or not at all. This more qualitative data
gives a fuller sense of what some missionaries are thinking and feeling.
Of the 3676 different search phrases typed in during the first year 419 of them
began with the words “missionary” and “missionaries.” Of the 5935
different search phrases typed in during the second year, 799 of them began
with “missionary” or “missionaries.” Of the 8484 different search phrases
typed in during the third year, 1758 of them began with “missionary” or “missionaries.”
Totaling the frequencies of these phrases over all three years resulted in 4229
of the total of 25,740 inquiries, about one-sixth of all inquiries. Table
4 contains some of the phrases typed in beginning with “missionary” or
“missionaries.”
|
Table 4
A sampling of
more qualitative data, phrases typed in search engines
|
|
|
|
|
Beginning with “missionary”
|
Beginning with “missionaries”
|
|
|
|
|
missionary abuse school
|
missionaries and adultery
|
|
missionary anger
|
missionaries are a pain
|
|
missionary child sexual abuse
|
missionaries bad
|
|
missionary frustrations
|
missionaries feel inadequate
|
|
missionary guilt
|
missionaries have feelings too
|
|
missionary moral failure
|
missionaries life with no light
|
|
missionary sin
|
missionaries locking your heart
|
|
missionary struggles on the field
|
missionaries loneliness
|
|
missionary suicide
|
missionaries need encouragement
|
|
missionary unethical
|
missionaries need help
|
As noted earlier readers can look at not only the phrases beginning with
missionary or missionaries, but also all of the phrases typed if they download
the Excel spreadsheet. Reading the list of those entries typed in only
once each can be everything from heartrending to hilarious. The ones in
Table 4 tend to be heartrending. Reading through the entire list gives
one a better grasp of the vast scope of issues missionaries face.
Multiple choice
Finally, we can find out what people click when presented with a list of 35
topics relative to member care (an additional ten topics were posted the second
and third years but are not included in this analysis since they could not be
downloaded the first year). Table 5 shows the relative frequencies of
opening and/or downloading the brochure on each topic. As one would
expect, the order of the frequency distribution below is roughly the same as
those of the words and phrases people typed into the search engines.
People arriving at the “brochures” page can click on the words in the first
column to open the selected brochure, and the second column tells how many
people did that. When the selected brochure opens, a link at the top of
the page says, “click here to download as a .pdf file.” The third column
tell how many did that. The fourth column gives the total number of
responses to each brochure. To see updated complete
monthly/annual statistics for all brochures please download www.missionarycare.com/brochure_stats.xls.
|
Table 5
Number of
responses to each of 35 brochures on www.missionarycare.com
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Topic Selected
|
Opened
|
Downloaded
|
Total
|
|
|
In .htm
|
as .pdf
|
Responses
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
What Missionaries Ought to Know about… Series
|
|
Conflict
|
20065
|
364
|
20429
|
|
Burnout
|
2988
|
593
|
3581
|
|
Adolescence
|
3021
|
547
|
3568
|
|
Saying Goodbye
|
3089
|
445
|
3534
|
|
Culture Stress
|
2497
|
657
|
3154
|
|
Depression
|
2568
|
488
|
3056
|
|
Leadership
|
2371
|
649
|
3020
|
|
Sexual Stress
|
2430
|
376
|
2806
|
|
Reentry
|
2019
|
604
|
2623
|
|
Maintaining Health
|
1960
|
452
|
2412
|
|
Anger
|
1948
|
429
|
2377
|
|
Books
|
1953
|
390
|
2343
|
|
Reconciliation
|
1896
|
374
|
2270
|
|
Counseling
|
1512
|
719
|
2231
|
|
Psychological Testing
|
1750
|
392
|
2142
|
|
Forgiveness
|
1789
|
335
|
2124
|
|
Guilt
|
1702
|
357
|
2059
|
|
Member Care
|
1622
|
421
|
2043
|
|
Anxiety
|
1638
|
388
|
2026
|
|
Each Other
|
1525
|
410
|
1935
|
|
Relationships
|
1529
|
370
|
1899
|
|
Sexual Abuse
|
1441
|
451
|
1892
|
|
Expectations
|
1478
|
397
|
1875
|
|
Grief
|
1397
|
329
|
1726
|
|
Trauma
|
1281
|
384
|
1665
|
|
Ministry Separation
|
1310
|
326
|
1636
|
|
Stewardship of Self for Christian Workers Series
|
|
Event-Oriented (Time)
|
3801
|
971
|
4772
|
|
Time-Oriented (Time)
|
2526
|
830
|
3356
|
|
Stress
|
2132
|
679
|
2811
|
|
Anxiety
|
2079
|
512
|
2591
|
|
Depression
|
1864
|
558
|
2422
|
|
Sleep
|
1595
|
454
|
2049
|
|
Internet Immorality
|
1416
|
492
|
1908
|
|
Biblical Basis
|
1352
|
501
|
1853
|
|
General Principles
|
1313
|
481
|
1794
|
Note that two series of brochures were available, one series directed at
Christian workers in general and the other series is directed at missionaries
in particular. As would be expected because it is directed at a wider
audience, the “Christian workers” series had a higher average of people
visiting each brochure. However, the ones directed at missionaries
specifically were all opened hundreds of times.
The topics opened least are also of interest. We often hear that interpersonal
relationships, conflict, the need for forgiveness and reconciliation are major
problems among missionaries, but these were all in the lower half of brochures
opened during the first year. Of course, they were opened by some people,
but far fewer than the other brochures. During the last nine months of
the second year Google an image on the conflict brochure so that hundreds of
people each month arrived at that brochure when visiting the website, so the
data for conflict are inflated due to this artifact when considering the data
for both years.
The role of trauma in the lives of missionaries has also received much
attention during the last few years, but the brochure about trauma was the next
to least one opened. Likewise, member care professionals often emphasize
the amount of grief experienced by missionaries with their multiple losses, but
this brochure was also not very likely to be opened.
Idiographic Data
In addition to finding out what large numbers of people want to know, one can
follow the paths of the visitors as they move through the website. Table
6 shows the first part of the path of the first few minutes of a visitor to
www.missionarycare.com.
Table 6
Example of the
first part of the path of a visitor to www.missionarycare.com.
Note that the person opened the brochures on burnout, depression, conflict,
relationships, reconciliation, and grief, staying one each one only about half
a minute each—probably quickly scanning down through each. After that,
(but not shown in the table for space reasons) the missionary used a search
engine to look for “missionaries dealing with family illness,” and that search
returned him or her to the website. He or she then searched the database
for reviews of articles on “tension,” reading the details about the following
two articles: “Grudges—Missionary Killjoys” and “Decreasing fatigue and illness
in field-work.” It is amazing what one can learn about missionaries as they
visit the website.
One can also learn something about people asking for an appointment.
Table 7 shows the path of a person visiting the website for the second time, a
visit to request a meeting with us. It also shows the beginning of the
email we received as a result of this visit.
Table 7
Path of a person
visiting www.missionarycare.com and the email sent as a
result of the visit.
Path:
Email:
From:
To:
<ron@missionarycare.com>
Date: Mon, 15 Nov 2004
18:19:07 -0500
Subject: meeting
Message-ID:
Hello Mr. Koteskey,
My name is ___________. I am a student at….
Note that the person came to the website by keying in the URL (no referring
link), and immediately went to the page which had our contact information at
6:09 (and 36 seconds) in the evening. The person remained on that page
for about 10 minutes and sent us an email at 6:19 (and seven seconds) with an
introduction and a request to meet. Then he or she returned to the
website, looked at an E-book, visited the information about reentry, then went
to the brochures and read the one on Internet Immorality. Though spending
only seconds on most pages, he or she spent more than eight minutes on the one
about internet immorality. All of this information is useful to helping
people when one meets them.
Caveats and
Conclusions
No kind of research is perfect, and this method of analyzing visits to a
website has its limitations like any other approach. The two major
problems are that the sample is not a random sample of all missionaries and
that the website was not designed as an experiment but as a means of helping
people. Analyzing this kind of data is similar to analyzing the data
gathered from people who visit a clinic; however, these people were ones who
visited a website for self-help or to help others.
Not a random sample
Probably no one ever takes a random sample of all people interested in member
care. Most researchers select their sample. The fact that this data
is from real people looking for help for real problems is not only a strength
but also a weakness. The sample consisted of people who selected
themselves. They were also only people who have web access and who use
search engines to find information on the Internet. No one knows exactly
what percentage of those interested in member care fall into this category, but
it is a very high one. Most missionaries and member care workers now have
email and Internet access. That percentage will climb further as
technology develops so that downloads from satellites become as common as
downloads through DSL, broadband, and a telephone connection and modem are now.
Not only do the visitors to the website select themselves, but also they are
selected by the search engines and the topics available on the website.
As mentioned in the introduction, this website has not only the brochures, but
also a database with over a hundred topics relevant to missionary member
care. Thus, many people arrive at it because of this breadth of content
on the site. Of course, this is still a limitation on the randomness of
the sample. Missionaries may be asking other questions of which member
care professionals are not yet aware.
In addition, people other than missionaries and member care professionals visit
the site. The large number of people coming to find information on time
management and adolescence likely includes many people who are not
missionaries. This is analogous to analyzing data from a clinic
specializing in one disease, but to which patients who do not have that disorder
also come.
Designed to help, not as an experiment
Designed to assist those seeking help, the data from the opening of the
brochures leaves much to be desired when doing research. Two brochures
are about depression, and two are about anxiety. How do we treat those
data? Do we take the sum, the mean, or some other measure? Two
brochures are about different kinds of time management and several are about
different kinds of stress. Again, those data can be analyzed in several
ways.
Conclusion
Although this method of gathering data is not perfect, it is a valuable
addition to the usual method of taking surveys so often used. The results
in many cases paralleled the results from surveys, but other cases seemed to
indicate that other problems were not as widespread as some have thought.
In addition, much valuable data is collected automatically as people surf the
web, and it is there for us to “mine.” We can see which topics bring
missionaries to our websites, trace their paths through our websites, see how
long they spend on each topic, etc. This can give us new insight into what
missionaries and people interested in member care want to know.
Addendum
Beginning June 8, 2006, we began keeping statistics on how
often people requested a list of publications on each topic in the database,
how often they requested a list of publications by each author in the database,
and how often they requested the full citation of each publication in the
database. To see the data from that time to the present by clicking on each of
the links below.
Table 8: Frequency
distribution of the number of times people requested the list of available
publications on each topic referenced in the database beginning June 8, 2006.
Table 9: Frequency
distribution of the number of times people requested the full citation of each
publication in the database beginning June 8, 2006.
Table 10: Frequency
distribution of the number of times people requested the list of publications
by each author in the database beginning June 8, 2006.
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