Date of Award

8-2019

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Psychology (PsyD)

Department

Graduate Department of Clinical Psychology

First Advisor

Mary Peterson, PhD

Second Advisor

Brooke Kuhnhausen, PhD

Third Advisor

Mark McMinn, PhD

Abstract

This paper provides a brief historical overview of the integration of psychology and Christianity while highlighting some of the growing tensions within the movement. Integration of psychology and Christianity has been heavily influenced by training that occurs at APAaccredited programs which explicitly integrate psychology and Christianity as part of their training, making integrative training a salient component to evaluate when considering the future development of the integration movement. An overview of the current research on the effectiveness of learning integration among undergraduate and graduate populations is offered followed by exploratory questions addressing how these inputs may relate to students’ experiences of God and their clinical work. A program evaluation was conducted, including six explicitly Christian APA-accredited programs.

Participants included 299 students and 51 faculty from six different training programs. Rank order profile analysis was completed using an overall repeated-measures multivariate analysis of variance followed by paired samples t-tests to determine the importance placed on integrative concepts, revealing that students demonstrated a preference for more post-modern and contextual constructs. Means between student and faculty population were compared, demonstrating that overall faculty perceive integration training as going better than students. Finally, qualitive data was analyzed using Kappa coefficient. Consistent with current pedagogical research students reported a desire for increased contextual, relational, applied learning to be included in their integration training. Additionally, students reported a desire for inclusion of more diversity and increased safety across differences. This research highlights the importance of integration training models adapting to a post-modern and relational frame.

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