A study of expressed barriers, and their comparative strengths, to conducting a health ministry in selected seventh-day Adventist churches in Idaho, Oregon and Texas

The purpose of the study was to determine the effect of geographic location, exposure to a health education program, and church position (pastor or layperson) on ten expressed barriers to conducting a health ministry in local Seventh-day Adventist churches. A paired comparison instrument, filled out by 217 church members in the states of Idaho, Oregon, and Texas, provided the rank order of the barriers. It was hypothesized that there would be no significant difference in the selected barriers between the groups tested, nor in the relative strength of each barrier within the groups tested. Results were obtained by utilizing two methods. Kendall's coefficient of concordance, the Friedman ANOVA for correlation, and Spearman's Correlation of Coefficients were used for statistical analyses, while Thurstone's (1927) method of tabulation provided a numerical analysis. All null hypotheses were accepted.