Examining Connections between Values and Practice in Religiously Committed U.K. Clinical Psychologists

Abstract

Christian psychologists as employees of secular organizations may experience a particular values interface of their religious commitment and their workplace setting. The idiographic emphasis of this study involved data collection from a small group of Christian U.K. clinical psychologists, using repertory grid and semi-structured interview procedures, and a mix of exploratory quantitative and qualitative data analysis. The three themes reported (an added dimension to work, disclosure to colleagues and clients, and the values congruence/clash of integration) are discussed as providing illustrations of greater evocative detail than is possible from questionnaire-driven research. The aspects of the grounded theory analysis of the data are brought together in a tentative model of identity comprising constantly shifting positions on the dimensions described by the three themes.