The Brief Spirituality/Religiosity Competency Scale
Principal Investigators: Dr. Jennifer Callahan & Andrew A. Dimmick
The BSRC maps onto the 16 religious and spiritual competencies developed by Vieten et al., 2013. Each item is measured on a visual analog scale (0-100) with anchors of Does not meet expectations, Readiness for Practicum, and Well Developed Competence. Each anchor is accompanied by behavioral definitions to aid in the ease and accuracy of rating. The tool is meant to be used by individuals with expertise in psychotherapy and religiosity and spirituality to provide competency ratings of clinicians in training settings.
The Brief Spirituality/Religiosity Competency Scale →
Background
The Brief Spirituality/Religiosity Competency Scale – Short Version was developed to address the growing need for reliable measures of clinician competence in religious and spiritual domains within psychotherapy. Psychometric evaluation of the scale revealed adequate internal consistency, inter-rater reliability, and inter-item correlation, confirming its reliability as an assessment tool. The scale demonstrated good convergent validity, correlating well with a measure of functional competence, and good divergent validity, indicating that it accurately measures the intended constructs without overlap with unrelated skills. Key items on the scale, such as those assessing empathetic engagement with religious and spiritual issues and the ability to help clients utilize spiritual strengths, were found to predict the overall therapeutic alliance effectively. These results underscore the scale’s utility in both training and clinical settings, providing a robust tool for enhancing and evaluating religious and spiritual competence among clinicians.
Settings
Graduate school courses
Internship/Practicum sites
Supervision
Faculty/Professional development
Populations
Individuals
Note: Developed for individual psychotherapy, but could be used in other settings if provided with psychometric validation.
Evidence
Excellent internal consistency across the five items (α = .97).
Significant inter-rater correlation for each of the 5 items (p = .001 to .03; r = .80 to .94).
Significant inter-item correlation for each item.
Significant correlations with expert rated competency on the functional items of the Practicum Evaluation Form (p < .001; r = .43 to .70)
Feedback
Experts using the tool reported increased insight into how they approach clients’ religious and spiritual concerns.
Keywords
Religious/Spiritual competence; training; education; psychotherapy
