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The Aitheros Research Association:
Exploring Spirituality in Counseling
The Aitheros Research Association is a research organization devoted to a research program exploring spirituality in the field of counseling. According to a rapidly growing body of research, spirituality is an important psychological issue to include in counseling. Apart from the sheer number of people to whom spirituality is important, there is substantial evidence that links spiritual variables with positive mental health (Bergin, 1991; Hackney & Sanders, 2003). Thus spirituality is not merely a viable topic for discussion in the counseling research literature. It is an important part of wellness, as well as a multicultural competency, that forms an important phenomenological value system for many individuals. “According to an extensive body of literature, choosing to ignore, discount, or ‘pathologize’ the religious and spiritual beliefs of clients is unwise, unethical, and clinically irresponsible” (Watts, 2001, p. 214).
A great deal of research on spiritual topics in counseling and psychology has been undertaken over the last decade, but there remain conspicuous gaps in the literature. Therefore, the Aitheros Research Association has undertaken to fill these gaps. This research group has constructed a research library of most of the peer-reviewed journal articles in the mental health literature in which the main focus of the article is religiosity or spirituality in mental health; this library currently has over 1800 articles in it. Drawing from this research library, the Aitheros Research Association also has five discrete research teams currently working on five distinct research projects, each focusing on a different aspect of religiosity or spirituality in counseling. These five projects are the definitions project (defining religious and spiritual constructs in the research literature), the construct validity project (verifying the construct validity of religiosity, spirituality, and faith and their component sub-constructs), the clinical judgment project (investigating the clinical judgments that clinicians make of religious and spiritual clients), the CQR project (assessing the religious and spiritual content (if any) that clients would like to address in counseling), and the Pagan project (exploring the specific religious and spiritual needs of Paganism, a religious tradition that has been particularly misunderstood, stigmatized, and underserved).
The Aitheros Research Library: This is a good collection of academic writings on spirituality and counseling -- a library of all the peer-reviewed journal articles published in the psychology and counseling research literatures in which the main focus of the article is both spirituality and counseling. We have made a bibliography of this library available online to whomever may benefit from it:
"The Definitions Project": A Definitional Content Analysis of Spirituality, Religiousness, Faith, and the Sacred in the Mental Health Literature. What is spirituality? How is it similar to and different from religion, faith, and related concepts? Can we agree on a common definition of spirituality, or is it one of those concepts (like intelligence) that everyone knows, but no one can define? The Definitions Project is a qualitative content analysis of a random sample of articles in the mental health research literature, exploring how researchers define the terms spirituality, religiousness, faith, and sacred.
"The Construct Validity Project": An Empirical Investigation of the Construct Validity of Religiousness, Spirituality, and Faith. Most writers in the United States today seem to believe that spirituality and religiousness (and possibly also faith) are distinct constructs, but can this be empirically proven using existing measures of religiousness, spirituality, and faith? How much overlap exists between the different kinds of religiousness, spirituality, and faith that have been described? The Construct Validity Project is a two-part study investigating the construct validity of several scales measuring religiousness, spirituality, and faith, using a multitrait convergent discriminant analysis to attempt to differentiate between these broad constructs and a second-order factor analysis to attempt to discover overlap between their component sub-constructs.
"The Clinical Judgment Project": The Impact of Client Faith and Race, and Counselor Multicultural Competence and View of Faith Relevance, on Clinical Judgments. Are counselors providing effective services to religious and spiritual clients? Are clinicians prone to clinical judgment faith biases -- do they make judgments that are influenced by client religiosity or spirituality? The Clinical Judgment Project is a quantitative survey of a national sample of clinicians investigating the impact of client type of faith (religious, spiritual, or secular), client level of faith (high, moderate, or low), client race (Black or White), counselor multicultural competence, and counselor view of faith relevance on the diagnostic, prognostic, and severity judgments that clinicians make of Black and White highly and moderately religious, highly and moderately spiritual, and secular case vignettes.
"The CQR Project": A Consensual Qualitative Research Study of Client Perspectives on Religious and Spiritual Issues in Counseling. What spiritual things do clients want to talk about in counseling and psychotherapy? What spiritual needs do clients have? Do therapists even need to address spirituality in counseling? What do clients have to say about this? The CQR Project is a study which is using Consensual Qualitative Research (CQR) methodology to interview clients in counseling in an exploration of how they see the terms spirituality, religiousness, and faith, and what sorts of spiritual, religious, or faith issues (if any) they want to discuss in counseling.
"The Pagan Project": Participant-Informed Research on Religiously-Sensitive Therapy with Followers of "The Old Religion." What are the specific needs of Pagan clients -- clients who are members of Paganism, a religious tradition that have been misunderstood, stigmatized, and underserved? Specifically, what do counselors need to know in order to provide effective services to Pagan clients? The Pagan Project is a study interviewing Pagan college students, and soliciting online feedback from a broader sample of Pagans, to explore what they think counselors should know in order to provide effective services for Pagan clients.
The Aitheros Research Association is also a part of a broader endeavor called the Aitheros Project. It is one of several enterprises that comprise the Aitheros Project, all of which are simultaneously ongoing.
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_______________________________________________________________________________
Aitheros Research Association Home * The Aitheros Project * About the Association
The Aitheros Research Library * The Definitions Project * The Construct Validity Project
The Clinical Judgment Project * The CQR Project * The Pagan Project * Contributors
_______________________________________________________________________________