TPC Journal V7, Issue 2 - FULL ISSUE

120 The Professional Counselor | Volume 7, Issue 2 Information questionnaire. An information questionnaire was developed to gather basic demo- graphic and background information. In addition to demographic variables of age, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation and gender identity, five additional variables were evaluated: (a) self-identified religiosity, (b) self-identified spirituality, (c) education level, (d) counseling experience with LGB clients (the number of LGB clients worked with), and (e) LGB interpersonal contact (the number of friends and relatives who identify as LGB). A brief, 4-item measure of self-identified religiosity captured the importance of religion in participants’ lives based on previous studies (Rainey & Trusty, 2007; Whitley, 2009) and census methods of measuring religiosity (Clark & Schellenberg, 2006; Lippman et al., 2005). Participants were asked to rate the importance of religion in their lives (0 = not at all, 1 = somewhat, 2 = important, 3 = very important ), service attendance (0 = never, 1 = few times a year, 2 = few times a month, 3 = once a week or more ), personal practices (0–7 scale = number of days per week spent engaging in religious behavior such as praying, reading scripture), and religious affiliation (open-ended ; 0 = no identified religious affiliation, 1 = identified religious affiliation ). Item scores were transformed into z-scores and then summed, where higher scores indicate higher levels of religiosity. In this sample, internal consistency of the four items in the religiosity measure was .82. A brief, 5-item measure of self-identified spirituality was used to assess distinct aspects of spirituality from religiosity. A modified version of the Spiritual Transcendence Index (STI) was used, where spiritual transcendence refers to “a subjective experience of the sacred that affects one’s self-perception, feelings, goals, and ability to transcend difficulties” (Seidlitz et al., 2002, p. 441). The STI demonstrated high consistency and validity across several samples in exploratory studies, including adaptations of the STI such as those employed in this study (Good, Willoughby, & Busseri, 2011; Kim & Seidlitz, 2002; Seidlitz et al., 2002). The modified version of the STI used four items that did not include the term “God.” In this study, it was important that the concept of spirituality not be limited to only theists. For the four items, participants were asked to rate their experience of the following on a 1–6 scale (1 = strongly disagree to 6 = strongly agree ): “My spirituality gives me a feeling of fulfillment,” “Even when I experience problems, I can find a spiritual peace within,” “Maintaining my spirituality is a priority for me” and “My spirituality helps me to understand my life’s purpose.” Finally, one question was posed in a similar format to Nelson, Rosenfeld, Breitbart, and Galietta (2002) asking respondents to rate the importance of spirituality in their lives (0 = not at all , 1 = somewhat , 2 = important , 3 = very important ), which mirrors the wording of the parallel item in the religiosity measure. Item scores were transformed into z-scores and then summed, where higher scores reflect higher levels of self-identified spirituality. In this sample, internal consistency of the five items in the spirituality measure was .96 ( N = 453), reflecting strong scale reliability. Validity of modified versions of the STI also has been established (Good et al., 2011; Kim & Seidlitz, 2002). Data Cleaning To ensure quality and rigor, participants who answered less than 70% of the items on the SOCCS or MC-C were eliminated from the sample, based on the methodology of Henke, Carlson, and McGeorge (2009) and Rock, Carlson, and McGeorge (2010). Of the 556 initial respondents, 61 did not complete the required 70% minimum (20 of 29 items) on the SOCCS. The religiosity and spirituality measures included only four and five items, respectively; therefore, if even one item was omitted from either measure, those participants were eliminated from the sample ( n = 15). Finally, 27 respondents did not indicate their primary practice setting and were eliminated from the sample because the researcher could not confirm that they were a counselor.