| 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. |
