Date of Conferral
11-11-2024
Degree
Ph.D.
School
Counselor Education and Supervision
Advisor
Mary Kate Reese
Abstract
Religion and spirituality are vital components of multicultural competence, which are key ethical guidelines outlined by the American Counseling Association and the Council for Accreditation of Counseling and Related Educational Programs. Clients have reported that religion and spirituality are important in their lives; however, counseling students commonly feel unprepared in their training to address the topic with clients. Grounded in multicultural counseling theory (MCT) and namaste theory, the purpose of this quantitative correlational study was to describe the relationship between counselor educators’ intrinsic religiosity (IR), multicultural counseling competence (MCC), and spiritual competence (SC). Participants included fifty-six doctoral-level counselor educators recruited from the CACREP database of graduate programs and the CESNET listserv. They completed the Duke University Religion Index, the Multicultural Counseling Inventory, and the Spiritual Competency Scale. The results of a bivariate logistic regression revealed that individuals who scored higher in IR were 3.23 times as likely to score high on the SCS-R-II (p = .03) with a 95% confidence interval [1.07, 9.70]. A regression analysis measuring MCC and its relationship with SC was not conducted because scores on the MCI did not meet the assumptions for a regression analysis. The current research demonstrates the importance of increasing the SC of counselor educators so that counseling students can better meet the needs of client populations whose spiritual needs are not presently being sufficiently addressed in counseling.
Recommended Citation
Brixius, Theresa Lynn, "Relationship Between Counselor Educators’ Intrinsic Religiosity, Multicultural Counseling Competence, and Spiritual Competence" (2024). Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies. 16627.
https://scholarworks.waldenu.edu/dissertations/16627
