Pastoral and spiritual care interventions as independent variables in religion/spirituality and health research: a pilot project to operationally specify clergy & chaplain practices

The purpose of the pilot project is to develop a methodology for: operationally specifying clergy and chaplain interventions at a level of detail that will enable replication by other clergy and chaplains; developing consensus definitions of the constructs and terminology used in describing pastoral and spiritual care interventions; establishing the infrastructure of procedures for managing the development of an archival knowledge base of the pastoral and spiritual care practices of religious and spiritual care-givers. The methods for developing the initial prototype for this knowledge base are derived from the intervention specification methods of psychotherapists and nurses that are used for clinical trials to establish the efficacy of their practices. The results thus far have included the development of a number of preliminary draft specifications of interventions, and a preliminary template for the uniform representation of the various common aspects of clergy and chaplain interventions, and for the identification of terminological usages and conventions. The availability of fully specified operational descriptions suitable for replication in research studies will help to fill a gap in religion and health research, as well as support the long range goal of evidence-based pastoral and spiritual care.