Restricted Research - Award List, Note/Discussion Page
Fiscal Year: 2023
178 University of North Texas (142066)
Principal Investigator: Ruggero,Jennifer Lynn
Total Amount of Contract, Award, or Gift (Annual before 2011): $ 64,679
Exceeds $250,000 (Is it flagged?): No
Start and End Dates: 6/1/22 - 5/31/24
Restricted Research: YES
Academic Discipline: Psychology
Department, Center, School, or Institute: College of Lib Arts & Soc Sci
Title of Contract, Award, or Gift: The Religious/Spiritual Assessment Project: Assessing clinician competency in religiosity and spirituality and exploring its role in psychotherapy
Name of Granting or Contracting Agency/Entity:
Stetson University
CFDA:
Program Title: none
Note:
Project Overview: Psychotherapy clients have expressed preference for their psychotherapists to incorporate the clients’ religious and spiritual beliefs into clinical practice. Despite this, psychotherapist competency in addressing religious and spiritual concerns is not common practice and there is a lack of research connecting religious and spiritual integrations in psychotherapy to client outcomes. The R/S Assessment Project seeks to address two major unmet needs in the area of incorporating religiosity and spirituality into clinical practice while meeting the specifications of the funding priorities. We will produce an elegant tool for assessing clinician foundational and functional competencies in the areas of religiosity and spirituality. We will explore the relationship between clinician religious and spiritual competence and client outcomes by making use of licensed and trainee clinicians, trained simulated clients, and a panel of expert raters. Clinicians will participate in an Objective Structured Clinical Examination (OSCE) to test their general competency and religious and spiritual competency while working in simulated clinical scenarios. The R/S Assessment Project team will be committed to transparency about the project challenges and progress and to the dissemination of the project outcomes through the Open Science Framework, poster presentation, and eventual preparation and submission of a manuscript for a peer-reviewed journal. Specific project goals are to: 1. Develop a competency assessment measurement tool to evaluate clinician competencies across all 16 of the R/S competencies proposed by Vieten and Lukoff (2021) 2. Evaluate clinician competency using the newly developed measure of clinician R/S competency and analyze its relationship with client rated outcomes, providing validation for the competency measure in the process. Our location is an ideal environment to address the project goals. The accredited Clinical Psychology doctoral program at UNT is nationally known for expertise in evidence-based training (e.g., Callahan, Ruggero, & Parent, 2013). In addition, the program-affiliated UNT Psychology Clinic has the space and ability to record audio and video of the simulated sessions. Furthermore, there are several seminaries and other religiously-affiliated higher education institutions near the location of the proposed project, providing a broad pool for selection of experts to consult in measure development and simulated patient scenarios. Our team is experienced in incorporating religion and spirituality into psychotherapy (e.g., Dimmick, Swift & Trusty, 2020; Dimmick, Swift & Trusty, 2021; Price & Callahan, 2017; Trusty, Swift, Winkeljohn Black, Dimmick, & Penix 2021) and evaluation of clinician competency (e.g., Callahan, et al., 2018; Callahan & Watkins, 2018a,b,c,d; Price, Callahan, & Cox, 2018).
Discussion: No discussion notes