Assessment in Christian Counseling

ASSESSMENT in CHRISTIAN COUNSELING

What Christian Counselors Believe, Value, and Practice

Part 3: Assessment

Why does a powerful God let the faithful suffer? Where is God when your husband dies in a car crash? Where was God when you were abused? Where is God when you are flat on your back? Where was God when…? Traumatic events can raise the most challenging questions for people who place their faith in a powerful God.

Even everyday struggles can interfere with the relationship between a spiritual person and God or their sense of the sacred. Polls show that most people pray—even those who do not bother much with organized religion pray.

A whopping 84% of U.S. adults prayed in the last week!

Click for churchleaders post.

Doesn't it make sense for almost every psychotherapist in the U.S. to ask a few questions about spirituality? The odds are pretty good that a Christian has prayed about a relevant issue.

You might wonder how assessment can be considered a counseling intervention. It turns out that asking people questions is a helpful thing to do. Asking questions can help people identify their issues and find solutions.

If you can identify a problem, you may be able to solve it. If a spiritual struggle is relevant to a life problem, then asking about the struggle can help clarify what needs to be done. If a client expects a Christian counselor to pray and the counselor fails to include prayer within a session then that’s a missed opportunity. Sometimes we just don’t know where we are spiritually and we don’t take care of our spiritual needs during a crisis.

Survey Results

In this third post about the survey of Christian Counselors and Psychotherapists, I look at how clinicians evaluate spirituality. See the links below to find the first two parts.

As you can see from the table:

• Most clinicians ask about spirituality during an interview.
• A substantial percentage of clinicians ask about attendance at religious services.
• Nearly 2/3 of clinicians ask clients about their spirituality on intake forms.
• Only about a quarter of clinicians use questionnaires to assess spirituality.
• Not many ask about a person’s spiritual gifts or a fruitful life.

Interventions 1: How do Christian Clinicians Assess Spirituality?

Method	n	Common	Never	Rarely	Sometimes	Often	Most
1 Interview	240	91.25	4.17	4.58	18.75	24.58	47.92
2 Attendance	238	78.99	8.40	12.61	25.63	24.37	28.99
3 Intake form	242	64.05	32.23	3.72	6.61	4.96	52.48
4 Questionnaires	241	27.39	54.36	18.26	13.28	4.98	9.13
5 Ask spiritual gifts	239	23.01	52.30	24.69	18.83	3.35	0.84
6 Ask fruitful life	239	16.74	62.34	20.92	15.06	0.84	0.84

My Thoughts on the Low Use of Questionnaires

I’m used to seeing quick questions about religion or spirituality on medical intake forms when I review medical records. That’s not going to go far in assessing spirituality. Physicians and Mental health care workers aren't shy about asking intrusive questions. They want to know about your finances and personal history. They’ll ask about substance use and abuse. And they’ll ask about sex. But some don’t ask much about your religion or spirituality. Why is that? Feel free to share your ideas.

In some cases, it may be a stretch to ask details about religion and spirituality when it comes to certain aspects of counseling and psychotherapy. On the other hand, people pray about many things so it’s quite likely they have considered prayer, applicable biblical texts, and other helpful messages when it comes to those common reasons for seeking therapy: anxiety and depression. And spirituality may be even more relevant if a traumatic experience prompted a call for help.

I think clinicians and clients might consider a few relevant questionnaires as Spiritual Lab Work.

There are dozens of questionnaires available that deal with a great variety of spiritual matters. Many are focused on Christian spirituality or most suitable for people who hold a monotheistic view of God. But some are broader-based and useful in helping clinicians and clients explore a wide range of spirituality.

Even if an entire set of questions does not seem relevant, individual questions from some scales can help clinicians and clients discover ways their faith might be relevant to their well-being.

Measuring Spirituality: Examples

Attachment  to God Inventory (Beck & McDonald, 2004)

Religious Commitment Inventory (Worthington et al., 2003)

Santa Clara Strength of Religious Faith Questionnaire (Plante & Boccaccini, 1997).

Spiritual Well-Being Scale (Paloutzian & Ellison, 1991)

God Image Inventory (Lawrence, 1991)

Religious Problem-Solving Scale (Pargament et al., 1988)

Related Posts

Part 1  9 Beliefs of Christian Counselors

Part 2 The controversial values of Christian Counselors and Psychotherapists

References

Beck, R., & McDonald, A. (2004). Attachment to God: The Attachment to God Inventory, tests of working model correspondence, and an exploration of faith group differences. Journal of Psychology and Theology, 32, 92-103.

Bufford, R. K., Paloutzian, R. F., & Ellison, C. W. (1991). Norms for the Spiritual Well-Being Scale. Journal of Psychology and Theology, 19(1), 56-70.

Hall, T. W. God image inventory (Lawrence, 1991) Reviewed by Todd W. Hall and Randall Lehmann Sorenson.

Kaiser, D. L. (1991). Religious Problem-Solving Styles and Guilt. Journal For The Scientific Study Of Religion, 30(1), 94-98. [Includes a study of the Religious Problem Solving Scale]

Plante, T. G., Vallaeys, C. L., Sherman, A. C., & Wallston, K. A. (2002). The Development of a Brief Version of the Santa Clara Strength of Religious Faith Questionnaire. Pastoral Psychology, 50(5), 359-368.

Worthington, E. L., Jr., Wade, N. G., Hight, T. L., Ripley, J. S., McCullough, M. E., Berry, J. W., Schmitt, M. M., Berry, J. T., Bursley, K. H., & O’Conner, L. (2003). The religious commitment inventory-10: Development, refinement, and validation of a brief scale for research and counseling. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 50, 84-96.