In our last newsletter, I mentioned that I was intending to study how Japanese people understand their relationships with their fathers, and God the Father in particular. We hoped that the insights gleaned from this research would help us to (1) improve our ability to communicate important biblical truths to Japanese people, (2) thoughtfully consider how Japanese people’s relationships with their fathers can influence their relationship with God, and (3) even potentially highlight new opportunities for helping people with father-wounds to heal and grow.
Following receipt of approval from my Bible school's ethics committee, I commenced research. Below is:
(a) a copy of a questionnaire I created to help facilitate interviews
(b) some high-level results from the questionaires
If you'd like to read my final paper, please contact me using the "contact us" form on our website. I'd be happy to share more with you.
THE QUESTIONNAIRE
The following is an English version of the survey, though the actual questionnaire was conducted in the Japanese language.
THE RESULTS
For reasons of confidentiality, individual results will not be shared publicly, but here is a summary of the aggregate data.
Questions 1, 2, 22 (Demographics)
Questions 6, 7 (Traits of Fathers)
Questions 9, 10, 11 (Fathers' Activities)
Questions 12, 13 (Traits of Jesus & God the Father)
Questions 14, 18, 19 (What God Thinks / Feels About Me)
Questions 16, 17 (Kindest Parts of a Parent's Body)
Note that there were 13 participants in this study. This is a heat map of their answers.
