SCS Research Methods in Spiritual Care 4 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: A hospital chaplain wants to evaluate whether a dignity therapy protocol reduces existential distress in terminally ill patients. The most rigorous design would be:
- Single-arm pilot study
- Narrative case report
- Randomized controlled trial with a control group (Correct answer)
- Retrospective chart review
Correct answer: Randomized controlled trial with a control group
An RCT with a control group provides the strongest evidence of causality by randomly assigning participants to intervention or control conditions.
Question 2: Inter-rater reliability in qualitative spiritual care coding is best assessed using:
- Pearson correlation coefficient
- Cohen's kappa statistic (Correct answer)
- Cronbach's alpha
- Odds ratio
Correct answer: Cohen's kappa statistic
Cohen's kappa measures agreement between two raters beyond chance, making it appropriate for assessing consistency in categorical coding.
Question 3: Which concept describes the degree to which a spiritual well-being scale measures what it is intended to measure?
- Reliability
- Validity (Correct answer)
- Sensitivity
- Specificity
Correct answer: Validity
Validity refers to how accurately an instrument measures its intended construct, such as spiritual well-being.
Question 4: An action research approach in a hospital chaplaincy department would most likely involve:
- Randomizing chaplains to different caseloads
- Chaplains collaborating with staff to identify problems, implement changes, and evaluate outcomes cyclically (Correct answer)
- Blinding participants to the study hypothesis
- Analyzing archived chaplain notes without chaplain involvement
Correct answer: Chaplains collaborating with staff to identify problems, implement changes, and evaluate outcomes cyclically
Action research is participatory and cyclical, involving practitioners in identifying issues and evaluating change within their own practice context.
Question 5: When a spiritual care researcher discloses their own faith background and how it may influence the study, this practice is called:
- Confounding
- Reflexivity (Correct answer)
- Deception
- Randomization
Correct answer: Reflexivity
Reflexivity involves the researcher's critical self-examination of how their identity, beliefs, and position may shape the research process and findings.
Question 6: A 'mixed-methods' study in spiritual care research is characterized by:
- Using two different quantitative measures for the same variable
- Combining qualitative and quantitative data to provide a more complete understanding (Correct answer)
- Comparing results from two independent RCTs
- Applying two theoretical frameworks simultaneously
Correct answer: Combining qualitative and quantitative data to provide a more complete understanding
Mixed-methods research integrates both qualitative and quantitative data collection and analysis to leverage the strengths of each approach.
Question 7: In spiritual care research literature, 'spiritual distress' is most often operationalized as:
- Absence of religious affiliation
- A measurable state of suffering related to disrupted meaning, hope, or connectedness (Correct answer)
- Refusal of chaplain visits
- Low scores on intelligence testing
Correct answer: A measurable state of suffering related to disrupted meaning, hope, or connectedness
Spiritual distress is operationally defined as an observable, measurable state involving disruption in the sources of meaning, hope, love, or transcendence.
SCS Research Methods in Spiritual Care 4
A hospital chaplain wants to evaluate whether a dignity therapy protocol reduces existential distress in terminally ill patients.
The most rigorous design would be: