Psychology Commons^™

Residual Spiritual Shifts Regarding The Homeless Resulting From A College Poverty Immersion Experience, Elizabeth Garland, Heidi J. Johnson, Michael W. Firmin, Ruth Lowrie Markham, Kurt J. Stultz

The Research and Scholarship Symposium (2013-2019)

We report the results of a qualitative study, having interviewed 20 students who had 1.5 years previously been involved in a collegiate, weekend poverty immersion experience. We coded the transcripts, analyzed the data from a phenomenological framework, provided checks for internal validity, and report the common themes from the participants’ interviews.Three overall results were evident. First, participants reported believing that, generally, the church is ignorant regarding the needs of the poor and impoverished people around them. Second, students generally did not believe that the church was doing enough in order to combat poverty and/or homelessness, mentioning that the church’s outreach …