Initial psychometric properties of the Spiritual Bypass Scale in an Indian college student sample.

Abstract

The purpose of the present study was to examine the psychometric characteristics of the Spiritual Bypass Scale-13 (SBS-13) in India. English-speaking Indian graduate students (N ϭ 250) at a large university participated. Students were 22 years of age on average, and most were women, Indian, Hindu, and never married. The main measure of interest was the SBS-13. Convergent validity measures included the Religious Commitment Inventory-10, Sources of Spirituality Scale, and the Brief RCOPE. The factor structure of the SBS-13 initially reported in both the United States and Brazil was replicated in an Indian sample. A two-factor model (i.e., psychological avoidance and spiritualizing) was found as was a second-order model representing a SBS-13 total score. Alpha coefficients for scores on the subscales and total score were above .8. Convergent validity coefficients for associations of the SBS-13 with religious commitment, spirituality, and religious coping ranged from .23 to .73 with magnitude and direction consistent with prior studies. The present study provides initial evidence of the utility of the SBS-13 in an Indian sample.

Validation and test–retest reliability of the Spiritual Bypass Scale in Muslims and implications for psychological help-seeking attitudes and self-stigma.

“…Results supported the two-factor and higher order factor structure of the SBS-13 in MLUS, extending the research by Fox et al (2017Fox et al ( , 2020Fox & Picciotto, 2019;Picciotto et al, 2018;Taylor et al, 2021;Toussaint et al, 2021) to a religious group for whom spiritual bypass may be especially relevant.…”

“…Results revealed that all standardized factor loadings were significant ( p < .001) for items within their respective subscales, although fit for the original model was not adequate χ 2 (64) = 304.83, p < .001, RMSEA = .105, CFI = .911, SRMR = .062. Modification indices suggested that correlating error terms for Items 1 and 2 (similarly to Taylor et al, 2021), Items 3 and 4 (e.g., Fox et al, 2017; Picciotto et al, 2018; Taylor et al, 2021; and Toussaint et al, 2021), and Items 8 and 9 (e.g., Picciotto et al, 2018) would improve model fit, and these covariations were specified. Further, as in past studies, the factor loading for the reverse-coded Item 1 was negative, so Item 1 in its nonrecoded form was subsequently used (e.g., Taylor et al, 2021; Toussaint et al, 2021).…”

“…Additional aims of this study were to assess (c) the 1 year test–retest reliability of the SBS-13, and (d) whether SBS-13 predicted negative help-seeking attitudes and greater self-stigma of seeking help (SSOSH) in MLUS 1 year later. Due to consistent findings regarding the cross-cultural validity of the SBS-13, we hypothesized that (a) the SBS-13 would demonstrate similar psychometric properties in MLUS as it did in the studies by Fox et al (2017, 2020; Fox & Picciotto, 2019; Picciotto et al, 2018; Taylor et al, 2021; Toussaint et al, 2021) via two factors, Spiritualizing and Psychological Avoidance, that load onto a higher order factor of Spiritual Bypass. We also hypothesized that (b) the SBS-13 would be associated with negative help-seeking attitudes and greater SSOSH, that (c) the SBS-13 would demonstrate adequate 1-year test–retest reliability, and that (d) the SBS-13 would predict negative help-seeking attitudes and greater self-stigma 1 year later.…”

“…The SBS-13 consists of two factors, Spiritualizing (i.e., overappraisals of difficulties as stemming from spiritual origins) and Psychological Avoidance (i.e., avoiding difficult emotions and experiences using spiritual means), that load onto a higher order factor of Spiritual Bypass. Studies have explored the factor structure (and/or translations) of the SBS-13 in Brazil (Picciotto et al, 2018), India (Toussaint et al, 2021), Spain, Honduras (Motiño et al, 2021), and a mixture of Korean Americans and Koreans living in Korea (Taylor et al, 2021). Results revealed that the psychometric properties of the SBS-13 are retained well across cultures, although an item (usually the reverse-coded Item 1) is often excluded due to a negative loading, errors in translation (Motiño et al, 2021; Picciotto et al, 2018) or a lack of fit (Taylor et al, 2021).…”

Spiritual bypass as a moderator of the relationships between religious coping and psychological distress in Muslims living in the United States.

“…In our study, Cronbach's α was .91 for psychological avoidance, was .89 for spiritualizing, and was .92 for all 13 items. The SBS-13 has not been validated in Muslims, and exploratory factor analysis of the measure here (N = 350) yielded similar results to validation studies in Brazil (Picciotto et al, 2017) and India (Toussaint et al, 2021). That is, standardized factor loadings for the nine psychological avoidance items ranged from .61 to .84, and for the four spiritualizing items from .42 to .87.…”