The current study focused on three aspects of identity development relevant to the adolescent years: being an authentic person, perceiving control over and consistency in one's environment, and having consistent expectations from close others. In a two‐wave study of adolescents (n = 750), we examined how these aspects change over the course of a year, as well as whether these aspects correspond to the Big Five personality traits. Results indicated three important findings. First, all three aspects evidenced the capacity for change over a year, and appeared more malleable than personality traits. Second, youth higher on all aspects reported a more adaptive personality profile. Third, changes on these aspects coincide with those on personality traits over the year. Findings are discussed with respect to future directions for studying the interplay of identity and personality development.

To determine in which situations head nurses refer patients to health care chaplains and to detect significant influential factors, 192 head nurses from 117 health care institutions in the German part of Switzerland were surveyed with regard to situations in which they refer to a chaplain. On average, head nurses refer "often" to a chaplain in their daily work in situations where patients are dying or need religious-spiritual service or support, but they refer only "rarely" to a chaplain in situations where patients or their families express negative feelings or where other psychosocial needs are present. Moreover, the religiosity of head nurses, working in a general acute care hospital and a positive evaluation of the chaplaincy services determine significantly whether a head nurse calls for a chaplain in a particular situation or not. For quality improvement of chaplains' work, health care chaplains have to integrate themselves into the care team. On the contrary, standardized referral processes between chaplains and nurses as well as physicians have to be elaborated to reduce subjective factors (eg, the religiosity of the nurse) from the process of referring.

In recent years, much research work has been done in the field of religion/spirituality and healthcare. Many chaplains are wary of doing research because they assume it is cumbersome or potentially deleterious to ill patients. The aim of the present pilot study is, therefore, to find out if research on quality improvement of healthcare chaplaincy is emotionally distressing for patients. In connection with a questionnaire about quality improvement proceeding of healthcare chaplaincy, patients were asked subsequently to assess whether the completion of the questionnaire was emotionally distressing for them. A total of 91.89% of the 37 respondents said that the completion of the questionnaire was not or only slightly emotionally distressing for them. Furthermore, analyses for significant differences showed no effect, except for a significant association with the anxiety scale. Findings from this study suggest that participants found no objective reasons not to do research in healthcare chaplaincy.

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