The Selah Pilot Study of Spiritual, Mindfulness, and Stress Inoculation Practices on Stress-Related Outcomes Among United Methodist Clergy in the United States
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The job-demand-control-support model indicates that clergy are at high risk for chronic stress and adverse health outcomes. A multi-group pre-test-post-test design was used to evaluate the feasibility, acceptability, and range of outcome effect sizes for four potentially stress-reducing interventions: stress inoculation training, mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR), the Daily Examen, and Centering Prayer. All United Methodist clergy in North Carolina were eligible and recruited via email to attend their preferred intervention. Surveys at 0, 3, and 12 weeks assessed symptoms of stress, anxiety, and perceived stress reactivity. Heart rate variability (HRV) was assessed at baseline and 12 weeks using 24 h ambulatory heart rate monitoring data. A subset of participants completed in-depth interviews and reported skill practice using daily text messages. Standardized mean differences with 95% and 75% confidence intervals were calculated for the change observed in each intervention from baseline to 3 and 12 weeks post-baseline to determine the range of effect sizes likely to be observed in a definitive trial. 71 clergy participated in an intervention. The daily percentage of participants engaging in stress management practices ranged from 47% (MBSR) to 69% (Examen). Results suggest that participation in Daily Examen, stress inoculation, or MBSR interventions could plausibly result in improvement in stress and anxiety at 12 weeks with small-to-large effect sizes. Small effect sizes on change in HRV were plausible for MBSR and Centering Prayer from baseline to 12 weeks. All four interventions were feasible and acceptable, although Centering Prayer had lower enrollment and mixed results.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.004 | 0.003 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".