Assessment, Statistics, and Research

  The  Likelihood of Return to a Christian Counselor (LRCC) is a one-item scale. Participants in a study of Christian counseling answered one question (“Based on your experience, how likely are you to see a Christian counselor if you felt the need for counseling in the future?”) posed in the Likelihood of Return to a Christian Counselor (LRCC; Sutton et al., 2018).  The participants responded on a 5-point scale of likelihood ( Highly likely, Somewhat likely, Neutral, Somewhat unlikely, Not at all likely).  In study 2, the SCC was significantly positively correlated with the following measures: Schwartz Outcome Scale (SOS) . 56 Theistic Outcome Scale (TSOS) . 62 Adult Hope Scale    . 53  Avoidant subscale of the Attachment to God Inventory   -.46 Spiritual Practices Index   .43 Intratextual Fundamentalism Scale    .51 the number of treatment sessions  . 36 Related Scale Satisfaction With Counseling (SWC) Generalization Althou...

  Mental health professionals have recognized the importance of religion and spirituality to wellbeing. I have seen intake forms that ignore spirituality or ask only about a person’s religious identity or if they would like a visit from a chaplain or clergy during a hospitalization. Clinicians can reasonably ask how to explore the importance of spirituality to treatment without being overly intrusive or disrespectful when a patient does not volunteer relevant information. David Hodge (2013) offers four screening questions based on his review of the literature (p. 98). I offer a paraphrase of Hodge’s suggestions and suggest consulting his chapter, which I found in my university library (see reference below). Each question is tied to a one-word therapeutic purpose. 1. Importance How important is spiritual or religious faith to you? 2. Affiliation Do you attend religious services? Do you participate in any groups that would be considered religious or spiritual? 3. Resour...

Portsmouth Cathedral, UK; April 2017, Geoff W. Sutton Spiritual Practices Index (SPI) In recent years, researchers have characterized religion and spirituality as ways people find meaning in their lives--that is, religion and spirituality as meaning making systems. It isn't surprising that researchers disagree on a way to define religion and spirituality that encompasses all similar activities. Meanwhile, researchers continue to study various dimensions of religion and spirituality. In this post I will introduce a short scale that might be helpful in research and possibly in a clinical setting. Although it was written to assess Christian Practices, I will suggest how it could be modified. One way to think about the components of faith is three-dimensional, which includes beliefs, practices, and experiences. A few years ago, a group of us studied Christian counseling to discover what Christian counselors actually did that was different from other counselors. We wanted to ge...