A preliminary assessment of the association of religiosity and graduate study in clinical, counseling, and experimental psychology graduate students.

摘要

This study is an exploration of religiosity of clinical and counseling psychology graduate school students and their training programs. The participants consisted of first-year and last-year clinical, counseling, and experimental psychology graduate students, of which the latter were used as a comparison group. A mail-out survey was sent to 1,189 students who were members of the American Psychological Association's Graduate Students (APAGS), of which 627 students responded. A final N of 281 first-year and last-year students was drawn from the combined respondents, and consisted of 5% African Americans, 4% Asian Americans, 73% European Americans, 7% Hispanic Americans, 1% Native Americans, and 9% endorsing "other." Religiosity was defined as religious orientation, religious behaviors, religious attitudes/beliefs, and religious ideology, and was measured by the Quest Scale (Batson & Schoenrade, 1991 a, b) and a Religiosity Questionnaire consisting of items from previous research, and newly constructed items (Gallup, 1999; Lehman, 1974, Shafranske & Malony, 1990). Results indicated that first-years in each group were not significantly higher than last-years for religiosity. Clinical/counseling students were higher for religiosity than experimental students, though still low on these measures overall. The low n for experimental students made comparisons tenuous. A comparison between clinical/counseling students and previously surveyed psychologists lends evidence that there is a decline in traditional religious beliefs with further clinical experience, suggesting the importance of religious training for clinicians.