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Clients were matched to therapists based on how much their preferences for their therapists' religious background, current religious practice, importance of religion or spirituality in therapist's life, and therapist's minimum level of religious or spiritual expertise matched the therapists' self-assessments in these areas.
Clients were given choices in each of these areas. If they had a choice, they were then asked how important it was that the therapist met this qualification.
Click here to see the Client Religion Questionnaire
Therapists were asked to rate themselves in the same areas.
This was a well-liked part of TMatch. For some clients, this was a crucial aspect of their therapist preference, while for others it had very little importance. All clients liked having the opportunity to express these preferences. Therapists were not reluctant to answer these assessments. The only area that may not have been useful was religious background. Both clients and therapists tended to confuse this with current religious practice. In addition, once it was explained to clients what is was, none of them considered it very important.
This assessment should probably be retained as is, except that religious background should probably be removed. The next step from a research standpoint would be to study the effects on therapy of matching clients based on these preferences.