Development and Psychometric Validation of the Mental, Physical, and Spiritual Well-Being Scale

Abstract

Due to the growing interest in holistic health and well-being, the Mental, Physical, and Spiritual Well-being Scale was developed. This well-being scale has 30 items and incorporates mental, physical, and spiritual subscales. An initial set of items was developed and 186 university students responded to these. An exploratory factor analysis was conducted using principal components analysis with varimax rotation (N=100) to reduce the number of items in the scale. Three factors were extracted based on the eigenvalues, loading coefficients exceeding 0.3, and the screen test. Ten items from each of the three factors were selected, reducing the number of items from 66 to 30. Another factor analysis, performed on 129 employees of the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation and 229 students from Monash University, indicated three factors were representative of the mental, physical, and spiritual subscales. Test-retest reliabilities over 1 mo. ranged from 0.87 to 0.97 for the three subscales whilst internal consistency ranged from 0.75 to 0.85. Concurrent validity was examined using the General Health Questionnaire and the Spiritual Well-being Scale. The discriminant validity of the MPS was also explored using three activity groups nominated as highly physical (weight training) or highly mental (chess) or highly spiritual (prayer). Out of a total of 88 cases, 77.3% of these were correctly classified into their actual activity group based on their scores. Sample sizes were moderate and testing was of limited samples. More psychometric work is needed but preliminary findings indicate an accurate and reliable test.

Measuring Spirituality as a Universal Human Experience: A Review of Spirituality Questionnaires

“…Thirty items were chosen: for each well-being domain, the ten items with the highest factor loadings were selected. In a new study, an exploratory factor analysis again yielded three factors, but six items did not load as expected (Vella-Brodrick and Allen 1995). The MPS correctly predicted membership of three activity groups (chess, weight training and prayer) and was associated with a spirituality questionnaire (Vella-Brodrick and Allen 1995).…”

“…meditation, yoga, prayer etc. )?” (Mental, Physical and Spiritual well-being scale; Vella-Brodrick and Allen 1995). To be suitable for people with various backgrounds, the items of a questionnaire should also not inquire about a specific belief, such as belief in afterlife, witchcraft, or destiny.…”

A Meta-Analysis of the Relationship Between Spirituality and Quality of Life

“…The conceptualization of spirituality as part of a quality of life framework is seen in multidimensional quality of life instruments such as the Functional Assessment of Chronic Illness Therapy -Spiritual Well-Being (Brady et al, 1999), the Quality of Life -Cancer Survivors Instrument (Ferrell et al, 1995), the Mental, Physical, and Spiritual WellBeing Scale (Vella-Brodrick and Allen, 1995), the WHOQOL-100 (WHOQOL-Group, 1998), the McGill QOL Scale (Cohen et al, 1995), and the FACT-G (Cella et al, 1993). Similarly, operationalizations of spirituality, such as the Spiritual WellBeing Scale (Paloutzian and Ellison, 1982), commonly include items that implicitly refer to a relationship between spirituality and aspects of quality of life or wellbeing.…”

Psychometric properties of the Brazilian version of the lived experience component of the Spiritual Health And Life-Orientation Measure (SHALOM)

“…In interviews, subjects were presented with questions from several wellknown instruments designed to measure spirituality, namely the Spiritual Well-Being Scale (Ellison, 1983), the Spiritual Orientation Inventory (Elkins, Hedstrom, Huges, Leaf, & Saunders, 1988), the Mental, Physical and Spiritual Well-Being Scale (Vella-Brodrick & Allen, 1995), the Spiritual Assessment Inventory (Hall & Edwards, 1996), the Perceived Wellness Survey (Adams, Bezner, & Steinhardt, 1997) and the JAREL Spiritual Well-Being Scale (Hungelmann, Kenkel-Rossi, Klassen, & Stollenwerk, 1996). Exploratory factor analysis of the responses revealed four main factors (personal, communal, environmental and transcendental), confirming NICA's theoretical model (1975).…”