Methodology

The research question is addressed of Salvation Army Officers in the United Kingdom Territory, with the main scope being directed towards officers who are based in a Corps situation, although not exclusively so.

Format

The chosen format for the survey was the Francis Burnout Inventory, which has been developed from the Maslach Burnout Inventory by Leslie Francis and others in recent years to be used specifically with members of the clergy.[1]

It is constructed with 22 questions on two scales – “emotional exhaustion” being one, the other “satisfaction in ministry”. Each question is scored by the participant using a five point Likert scale ranging from “Strongly Disagree” to “Strongly Agree”. One of the questions is reverse scored.

In addition to the basic Inventory a number of other questions were also posed. This included information such as age, length of time in current and full time ministry, as well as more open questions such as what provides most satisfaction in their ministry, and what is the most exhausting.

As burnout is identified as being a state where an individual has insufficient recovery time the participants were also asked whether they felt that they had sufficient personal time, enough support, and from whom they received their support.

 Sample

Sitzia and Wood[2] in an analysis of studies of response rates in patient research suggested that rates of nearly 77% could be expected from face to face interviews, and of 67% where data was collected by mail.

In order to keep the sample compact for the purposes of this paper, and also bearing in mind the possibility for a larger, more statistically general sample in the future, I decided to use a purposive sample using three divisions, and to send surveys to all officers in those three divisions.

Permission was sought from the relevant Divisional Commanders to approach the officers in their respective divisions. This decision was taken to give some credence to the survey, should some officers be reluctant to participate. This decision was taken with knowledge that an earlier survey published in “The Naked Priest”[3] suffered difficulties as the authors decided against seeking permission or agreement from the diocesan bishops to contact priests in their charge. I acknowledge here the positive response given by the three DC’s.

By necessity the sample which will be analysed will be a self selecting group. If a future study is carried out on the whole officer group it could be done at a venue where all officers are present and therefore an accurate picture of the situation would be obtained.

Numerically this would equate to the other studies which have been completed with clergy of other denominations in the United Kingdom, though obviously it would be a much higher figure as a percentage of clergy in those denominations.

Delivery

Although The Salvation Army has a system for electronic mail, and all officers are allocated an email address, most officers do not use it regularly, if at all. However most officers do have access to email, and often Divisional Headquarters will send various items by email.

My initial plan therefore was to use the Headquarters email address list to send the survey and other information to individual email recipients. (All of the divisions had such a list.)

It was likely that not every officer would be on that distribution list, and so any others would have been given the opportunity to participate by receiving the same information by post.

Two of the divisions were happy for me to use their electronic distribution list to distribute the surveys, but one of the divisions was unable to supply it to me as they believed that passing it to me would breach their Data Protection Policy.

All of the Divisional Headquarters also send out a weekly mailing to officers, and all three divisions were willing to include a personally addressed envelope to each officer in their Division in a weekly mailing.

Whilst this method of communication was far from ideal it enabled the surveys to be delivered to all recipients in the same format, thereby enabling a comparison of results, including response rates.

Many officers feel that there are too many administrative demands made on their time. As the survey was received by them in an official mailing one of the drawbacks to the survey being sent in this way could be that it could be perceived as being “another piece of administration”, and could therefore be discarded.

The other consideration in terms of method of delivery is that if it was to be received through the post direct from me, without any official introduction, that prospective participants may be unwilling to share information with someone that had no authority to ask for that information.

After considering these possibilities the decision was made to go with the option of addressing envelopes to each officer, and having them sent out in the weekly mailing from Divisional Headquarters.

Each envelope contained two sheets:

an introductory letter from me (see appendices) which explained the background to the study, as well as the confidentiality and anonymity aspects of the study.

a copy of the Francis Burnout Inventory and the rest of the survey questions on a single sheet of A4 paper printed on both sides (see appendix)

Return

Opportunity was given for responses to be made by post, completing the survey form and returning it to a postal address given on the form, or to complete it electronically, with a website address being given on the survey.

The website link gave the opportunity to submit the form by email to me.

In order to drill down into the results of individual divisions, the paper copy of the surveys differed very slightly from division to division. In effect three different web pages were also used in the survey. All were identical except in the page title, solely to enable identification of the division from which the response came.

In order to preserve confidentiality it was requested that responses that came by post be marked as “Private and Confidential” and responses which came by email submission arrived directly in my email inbox.

Analysis

The Francis Burnout inventory was scored manually and entered onto a Microsoft Excel Spreadsheet for analysis.

The additional information was also entered onto the spreadsheet in order to gain an insight into the range of responses. The key words and themes were coded to enable summation and comparison.