Belief in Spiritual Beings Scale (BSBS): Development and Initial Validation

Abstract

Although belief in spiritual beings can be considered the main characteristic of religiosity/spirituality, a scale focused on specifically assessing this construct while remaining pertinent to people of different religious/spiritual denominations-including atheists and agnostics-is not available. In two studies, we present the process of developing the Belief in Spiritual Beings Scale (BSBS) and identify its psychometric properties. Study 1 designed 24 items, which were subsequently evaluated by a panel of judges and 24 representatives of the target population. In study 2, 1788 Brazilians of different religious/spiritual denominations answered the BSBS and five other related scales. Exploratory factor analysis found a unidimensional solution for the data, with the final version of the scale consisting of 13 items. The BSBS score correlated positively-highly or moderately-with measurements of organizational religious activity, non-organizational religious activity, intrinsic religiosity, and Western and Eastern religious beliefs. The level of belief/disbelief in spiritual beings was different among contrasting groups (i.e., religious spiritualists, non-religious spiritualists, gnostic non-spiritualists or atheists, and agnostic non-spiritualists or agnostics), and incrementally predicted almost all the participants’ spiritual denominations. Given this preliminary evidence of validity, the BSBS is an interesting instrument for studies aiming to measure the general level of belief/disbelief in spiritual beings-the “soul” of religiosity/spirituality.