Online Spiritual Care Interviews with 22 Professional Chaplains in the USA

Twenty-two de-identified interview transcripts from professional chaplains in the USA collected in early 2024. The data explores perspectives on expanding spiritual care into anonymous, asynchronous, and text-based online communities. The project was conducted by Alemitu Mequanint Bezabih and involves three research phases, with only Phase 1 data currently available.

Use Cases

• Analyzing professional chaplain perspectives on online spiritual care based on interview transcripts
• Studying the adaptation of grounded-theory methodology (GTM) for qualitative data collection in digital spaces
• Investigating the role of anonymity and asynchronous communication in care provision based on described community features
• Comparing in-person and Zoom interview dynamics for research on sensitive topics

Strengths

• 22 interview participants provide a substantive qualitative sample
• Data collection followed a structured grounded-theory methodology (GTM)
• Transcripts were manually double-checked against audio recordings for accuracy
• Includes paired intake and exit survey responses to track perspective shifts

Limitations

• Row count and column-level documentation are unknown, limiting suitability assessment
• Data is limited to Phase 1; Phases 2 and 3 are not yet released
• Recruitment used snowball sampling and cold emailing, which may introduce selection bias

Provenance

Source

QDR Harvested Dataverse

Collection Method

Semi-structured interviews and user testing sessions on Reddit, followed by auto-transcription and manual correction.

Time Range

Early 2024

Freshness

Last updated 2026-05-04 07:15:05; freshness should be verified.

Geography

USA, with participants on East and West Coasts