First-year adaptation of female, expatriate religious and humanitarian aid workers: a mixed methods analysis

Abstract

Previous research has demonstrated that international religious workers struggle more than other expatriate groups; our purpose was to investigate these differences. Data were from a larger project where 32 American female expatriate spouses were evaluated at three-month intervals during their first year of expatriation to a Middle Eastern country. Disaggregating the data allowed a comparison of worker outcomes (n = 5) to other expats (n = 25). Results indicated that worker marital satisfaction and global psychological functioning means were lower at most time-in-country intervals. Moreover, normative comparisons, a statistical procedure used to compare worker scores of global psychological functioning to a normative sample of chronically ill medical patients, indicated that worker scores were meaningfully lower at three- and nine-month intervals. In contrast, workers valued marital, parental, occupational, and homemaker life roles more than other expats. A consensual qualitative research analysis provides a longitudinal narrative unfolding of the first-year worker adaptation.