Assessing spiritual well-being: relating with God explains greatest variance in spiritual well-being among Australian youth

Abstract

How do we set standards in assessing spiritual well-being (SWB)? Most measures provide only scores on arbitrary scales. Therefore, if the questions differ, the scores are likely to as well. This paper reports on two scales developed with 460 Australian secondary school students, with diverse cultural and religious backgrounds, from state, Catholic, Christian Community and independent schools. The four domains model of spiritual health/well-being was the theoretical base from which 12 items were developed to reflect quality of relationships with each of self, others, environment and God/the Divine. The instrument with the five top-scoring items in each domain, known as Spiritual Health And Life-Orientation Measure (SHALOM), has been sought for use in over 200 studies in 20 languages. The second-highest sets of five items were extracted and found to form statistically valid factors, for a new instrument called SWBQ2. As would be expected, the mean values for the factor scores varied between SHALOM and SWBQ2, overall and by school type. However, regression analyses of the lived experience scores showed that relating with God provided greatest explanation of variance in SWB, on both measures. A doubleresponse method introduced for SHALOM was also used with SWBQ2 to compare each person's lived experience with their ideals, better reflecting quality of relationships, rather than just the arbitrary scores. There was negligible difference in dissonance scores on the four factors in both measures, that is, in comparing the difference between ideals and lived experiences. This method showed consistency in the quality of relationships reflecting SWB, contrasted with variance shown using only lived experience, as mentioned above. Relating with God was again most influential on SWB. These findings have implications for methods used in assessing SWB as well as outcomes.

You Can’t Beat Relating with God for Spiritual Well-Being: Comparing a Generic Version with the Original Spiritual Well-Being Questionnaire Called SHALOM

“…At .42, the â-value for Transcendental SWB far exceeded the others (Personal SWB .27, Communal SWB .25, Environmental SWB .33), indicating that Transcendental spiritual well-being explained greatest variance in spiritual well-being overall. This finding parallels those of the original SHALOM, which concluded that relating with God is shown to be most important for spiritual well-being [11,24].…”

“…The difference in score between the ideals and lived experiences reveals the level of dissonance or harmony in each domain of spiritual well-being. This double-response method has been shown to provide a better assessment of the quality of relationships reflecting each of four domains of spiritual well-being, in comparison with lived experiences only [11]. Comparing values of fit indices in Tables 3 and 4 for the university and secondary school cohorts reveals similar results, with the dissonance method generally providing better fit indices.…”

“…This sample was made up of 378 older students and staff in an Australian public university (see Table 1 for details). Another sample, comprised of 460 secondary school students, aged 12 to 18 years (mean = 15.3, SD = 1.7), among whom SHALOM was originally developed, in Years 7 to 12 in State, Catholic, Christian Community and other independent schools in Victoria, Australia [11]. …”

“…Simple language was selected to enable respondents to understand and probe complex constructs, as SHALOM was developed for use with secondary school students, in the belief that an instrument suitable for them would also be useful for adults. Consequently, the words 'God', 'Divine' and 'Creator' appeared in four of the five items used to assess the Transcendental domain of spiritual well-being, because notions such as 'higher power' and 'godlike force' were less comprehensible to the students [11].…”

Selecting the Best Version of SHALOM to Assess Spiritual Well-Being

“…No instrument can give an absolute measure of SWB. However, in order to check the consistency, or otherwise, of responses using different items, a second set of five items per domain were extracted from the same cohort as for the original SHALOM to form another psychometrically sound measure called SWBQ2 [61]. As their items varied, it was not surprising to find that the factor scores varied between SHALOM and SWBQ2 for Personal, Communal and Environmental SWB, but not the Transcendental domain, due to positive and negative variations between schools cancelling each other on this factor (see Table 2).…”