A Scoping Review of Psychological Assessment in Mission and Ministry Candidates

Abstract

Missionary attrition together with the problem of institutional child sexual abuse in the Church has highlighted the importance of a standardized psychological assessment process for mission and ministry candidates. This scoping review aimed to examine peer-reviewed publications, from 2001 to 2021, which focused on the psychological assessment of ministry and cross-cultural mission candidates, to find knowledge gaps that exist. Using scoping review guidelines, 6,739 references were identified and 2,476 duplicates were removed. A further 4,254 references were excluded because they did not meet screening criteria. A total of nine high-quality articles remained, together with five articles that were added based on the bibliography of these references. This scoping review found the few papers published either focused on the use of personality tests or made recommendations about how these assessments should be conducted. The studies reported that candidates for ministry and mission in US samples have normative personality profiles regardless of age or ethnicity. Other papers reviewed knowledge and opinion and highlighted the need for screening for psychosexual development and to prevent attrition in mission and ministry roles. The overall dearth of publications suggested a need for more international research into how to standardize and utilize psychological assessments.

Isn’t a Call Enough? What Is the Purpose of Psychologically Assessing Cross-Cultural Mission Workers?

“…Likewise, assessors could benefit from sharing ideas with each other about which psychometric tests to use, how they understand their contribution to the discernment process, and which psychological frameworks are most applicable to this process. There is a clear need for further research in this area (Jensma et al, 1997; Thompson et al, 2022).…”

“…Thematic analysis was used to identify and analyze patterns within the interview data because it is a flexible and useful research tool that provides a detailed and complex account of the data (Braun & Clarke, 2006). The need to maximize flexibility and richness was determined by the dearth of publications in this area in the past 20 years (Thompson et al, 2022). A standard six-phase thematic analysis process was followed (Braun & Clarke, 2006; O’Reilly & Dogra, 2017): (1) familiarization of data, (2) generation of initial codes, (3) searching for themes, (4) reviewing themes, (5) defining and naming themes, and (6) reporting (e.g., providing quotes and relating findings back to the research question and literature).…”

“…No such parallel exists in the mission literature. A recent scoping study revealed that very few peer-reviewed articles have been published in this area in the past 20 years (Thompson et al, 2022), with the existing literature only providing very broad direction about the purpose of assessments and how to conduct them (Crawford & Wang, 2016;Cureton, 1983;Ferguson et al, 1983;Gingrich, 2016;Hay et al, 2007;Schubert, 1993Schubert, , 1999.…”