A causal analysis of missionary and membership growth in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (1830-1995)

Although a strong positive correlation exists between missionary and member ship growth (r = .99), correlation is not causation. To establish causation , in addition to demonstrating relationship, nonspuriousness and temporal p recedence need to be demonstrated. The techniques and tools of time series analysis were used to assess possible causal relationships between missiona ry and membership growth. The deterministic and stochastic components of bo th the missionary and membership time series, which may lead to spurious re lationships, were removed using four different modeling techniques. The res ulting residuals were cross-correlated There was strong evidence of bidirec tional causality. Increases in missionaries lead to increases in membership six and 14 years later. Increases in membership lead to increases in missi onaries eight years later. Although technically ambiguous regarding causal direction, the lag zero correlation also was found to be significant and wa s interpreted as indicating that missionary growth produced membership grow th. While a theoretical explication of the causal processes involved still is needed and further research is warranted, initial evidence substantiatin g complex causal relationships between missionary and membership growth was presented and discussed.