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Given the nature of recent and anticipated military engagements, there is growing interest in infusing more cultural learning into U.S. military training to prepare military personnel more effectively to respond to security challenges in international theaters of operation as part of increasingly diverse U.S. Armed Forces. Costly errors and painful lessons from U.S. involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq since the early 2000s amplified this need and convinced the Department of Defense that its military personnel must have the necessary knowledge, skills, and intercultural competence to meet the demands of frequent and challenging complex multicultural engagements. This study contributes significantly to the state of knowledge about the level of intercultural sensitivity of U.S. military personnel and the personal and professional factors underlying these orientations. A multimethod protocol involving the Intercultural Development Inventory (IDI), surveys, and in-depth interviews generated data on 64 service members, including enlisted personnel and officers, who studied at a military language school from 2006–2021. The research revealed that a majority of subjects has Minimization and Defense/Polarization orientations, which is consistent with other professionals, and that most significantly overestimated their intercultural sensitivity to a greater degree than subjects in other studies. Less than five percent scored in the lowest category, Denial. Less than five percent scored in the fourth-highest category, Acceptance, while none scored at the highest level, Adaptation. Personal and demographic factors contributing most to intercultural sensitivity were family upbringing, living in culturally diverse areas, intercultural encounters, foreign language proficiency, and ethnicity and race. The most influential professional factors were integrating culture into language training, ongoing cultural training, cultural knowledge, frequency of intercultural encounters in multiple contexts, and leadership attitudes. The findings provide valuable insights for scholars, policy makers, curriculum developers, military leaders, and others actively involved in working with and training U.S. military personnel.

For the past two millennia, missionaries have crossed from one culture to another to bring the Christian message to all cultures of the world. Questions about the effectiveness of these mission efforts have been asked and researched by many; however, one key question remains unanswered: what personal attributes help a person to be more competent at crossing cultures as they interact with people from other cultures? Although cross-cultural competence has been studied in a variety of fields over the past 50 years, the models and assessments used have never been applied to Christian missionaries. To address this deficiency, this parallel convergent mixed-methods study used a 169-question survey to first identify the levels of 11 attributes linked to cross-cultural competence among U.S. Association of Vineyard Churches missionaries, and then empirically explored the demographic and cognition style factors that might explain variation in the distribution of these attributes. Additionally, qualitative interviews were conducted with a handful of indigenous leaders who worked with the missionaries that participated in the survey. Results revealed that respondents scored highest in the attributes of: relationship orientation, interpersonal skills, culture interest, inquisitiveness, inclusiveness, and self-efficacy, while variation in the attributes were explained by the extent to which respondents were cross-culturally prepared, the number of mission trips taken, years of cross-cultural experience, amount of cross-cultural training, and personal fear of invalidity. These qualitative data supported several attributes, including inclusiveness, suspending judgement, stress resilience, and self-efficacy; however, it challenged the attributes of personal need for structure, optimism, and language proficiency. Importantly, these qualitative data also revealed that contextualization, an attribute not measured in the quantitative study, was important; therefore, scoring high in some cross-cultural competence attributes may not increase a person’s cross-cultural competence, based on the culture. This study supports, as does the current research of cross-cultural competence models and assessments, the need to further refine these models and assessments to develop more effective ways to assess the cross-cultural competence of individuals. As this was the first study examining the cross-cultural competence of Christian missionaries, the results will inform cross-cultural training, development, and selection to improve competence and effectiveness.

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