An Exploratory Study of Recalled Childhood Spiritually Transformative Experiences Among a Specialized Population Page: 163
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JENNIFER ELAM, PH.D.
Tobin Hart and a colleague asked 450 young adults about specific spiri-
tual experiences, including "moments of wonder and awe, unitive expe-
riences, and receiving spiritual guidance from a nonphysical source"
(Hart, 2003, p. 6). They found that, depending on the specific type of
experience, 10-80% reported having experienced it, and 60-90% re-
ported having first experienced it during childhood (pp. 6-7).
Their findings corresponded to my own research experience. When
I began researching mystical experiences and word got around that
I was a safe person to talk to, I had more people to talk to than I
could possibly arrange. Many of the people I did talk with described
experiences from their childhoods, and most told me they had never
or almost never talked about their experiences because they did not
feel safe to do so. From research like Hart's, from Sutherland's (2009)
summary of research on the childhood STE of near-death experiences
(NDEs), and from my own experience, I have concluded that people
representing a large segment of the child population have had and
are having non-ordinary experiences that they are not sharing (Elam,
1999, 2002). In Hart's words, their experiences do, indeed, represent a
largely secret spiritual world (Hart, 2003).
Methods
The present exploratory research involved asking adults about their
childhood STEs. Members of ACISTE, along with other individu-
als in related social networks, were invited by e-mail to complete a
25-question survey inquiring as to the details of their childhood
STEs. The online research tool Survey Monkey was used to gather
survey responses. General qualitative analysis was performed on sur-
vey responses, as was descriptive quantitative analysis such as count-
ing the frequency of occurrence for particular phenomena. In order to
protect participant confidentiality, the names that appear below are
pseudonyms.
The following data are based on a total of 53 completed response
sets. Comparison of the response sets revealed unique answers that
indicated each set was submitted by a different participant. However,
as we did not block multiple submissions from the same IP address,
submission of two unique response sets from the same participant
cannot be ruled out. The assumption for the following material is that
the response sets represented 53 different participants.
Participants' ages in years ranged from the teens decade to the 80s
decade, with most respondents in their 50s and 60s. We did not ask re-163
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Elam, Jennifer. An Exploratory Study of Recalled Childhood Spiritually Transformative Experiences Among a Specialized Population, article, Spring 2013; Durham, North Carolina. (https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc938008/m1/3/: accessed April 18, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, UNT Digital Library, https://digital.library.unt.edu; .