This afternoon I was talking with my professor about mission trips.  I went on a few in high school, and most of my friends did the same.  They’re awesome!  You get to help people, hold cute babies, build stuff, play soccer, and travel with a bunch of great kids your age.  When you return home you tell everyone what a great time you had, post pictures of all the great things you did, and sleep peacefully in your big comfy bed thinking about what a great person you are.

At least that is how it was for me, some people definitely had different experiences.  What I want to know is do short-term mission trips really help the people we think they do?  Or do they help us?

I typed the sentence “Do mission trips actually make a difference?” into Google, and all the results that came up were mission group travel companies saying “yes”.  Here is a the first quote on this website’s Find A Mission Trip page:

“We take great care in selecting mission trip locations that meet the physical and spiritual needs of the world’s poor. With trips in a variety of lengths, countries, sizes, price ranges, and work projects we are confident that you can find a short term mission trip that meets your needs.”

A trip that meets our needs?  Mmm interesting word choice.  All the websites I found through my initial search reflect industry bias.  Of course a mission trip company says mission trips are awesome.  It is time I find a neutral source.

Mission trips are usually associated with the Catholic church, and as I continue my research almost every source I can find is a Catholic organization promoting mission trips as Jesus Christ’s will.  Finally, I found what I was looking for on Christianity Today.  According to the article, priests and other professionals recently began to question short-term mission trips “ineffectiveness at creating change abroad.”

As I write this blog, I am realizing this is a tricky question to answer.  So I asked myself, what correlation am I actually studying here?  Turns out I am not studying any correlation.  When I sat down to write this blog I  wanted to prove short-term mission trips don’t work, and I was actively looking for ways to prove that.  I formally plead guilty to experimenter’s bias.

It is time I narrow my search.  And my new research question is (drum roll please)……

Do orphanages help people?

I found this National Geographic article.  It discusses a study that studied a group of 136 Romanian.  The study placed half of the kids in foster care and half of the kids and half stayed in an orphanage, and scientists tracked their physical, physiological, and neurological development for 14 years.  The scientists conclusion was consistent with the alternative hypothesis as they found the kids in foster care were better off than the kids in the orphanage.

This study was quite controversial because many believed it to be unethical.  There were plenty of studies already out there that proved it was obvious orphanages are worse for kids.

Organizations like UNESCO and UNICEF are working to find ways to get rid of orphanages and place kids into more family-like living situations.  JK Rowling works with the organization Lumos to do exactly that.  The organization’s goal is the following:

“No child should be denied a family life because they are poor, disabled or from an ethnic minority. Lumos works to support the 8 million children in institutions worldwide to regain their right to a family life and to end the institutionalisation of children.”

This New York Times article discusses a Duke University study that tested the correlation between orphanages and family care and failed to reject their null hypothesis.  The author reports “we are seeing children thriving in institutions.”  The study found there were “goods” and “bads” to both options.

Either the Romanian study or the Duke study is a false positive.  When you look at the meta-analysis it shows that most other studies are consistent with the Romanian one increasing the probability that the Duke study was a fluke.

So what can you learn from my rambling?  When you sit down to write a blog or conduct an experiment make sure you have a specific correlation in mind that you want two study.  You only get two variables.  Beware of industry/experimenter bias, and remember the more consistent studies there are that prove the same thing, the more reliable the results are.