Spirituality in counselor education: An investigation of trainees' spiritual beliefs, preparation, and competence

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationships among spiritual beliefs, preparation, and spiritual competence of master's-level Council for Accreditation of Counseling and Related Educational Programs (CACREP) counselor trainees completing practicum or internship requirements. Constructivism was used as the theoretical foundation of the study. A correlational survey research design with a linear regression analysis was used. Data were collected from 97 participants through an online survey comprised from four instruments: the Spiritual Involvement and Beliefs Scale-Revised (Hatch, Spring, Ritz, & Burg, 2006); the Spiritual and Religious Competency Assessment (Fluellen, 2007); Section III of the Counselor Spirituality Preparation Survey (Dobmeier & Reiner, 2012); and a demographic survey developed by the researcher. The results demonstrated statistically significant relationships among spiritual beliefs, preparation, and spiritual competence. The relationships in every case indicated that when one survey score was higher, the other survey scores also were higher. The strength of the relationship between students' preparation and spiritual competence (r = .6590) demonstrated the strongest correlation. The demographic variables demonstrated that no significant relationship could be correlated with spiritual beliefs; however, gender was related to preparation (p = .0213), and counseling specialty was related to spiritual competence (p = .0036). The characteristic most related to spiritual beliefs was age (p = .076). Because of the 42 missing values in the Spiritual/Religious Affiliation category, there were insufficient data to include this variable in the analysis. As a result, the impact of spiritual/religious affiliations on spiritual beliefs, preparation, and spiritual competence was undetermined. Age, ethnicity, religiously affiliated college/university, and supervision track lacked significance and could not be correlated with spiritual beliefs, preparation, or spiritual competence.