Open-Ended and Closed-Ended Measures of Religious/Spiritual Struggles: A Mixed-Methods Study

Abstract

Religious and spiritual struggles are typically assessed by self-report scales using closed-ended items, yet nascent research suggests that using open-ended interviews and prompts may complement and advance assessment and theories. In the current mixed-methods study, undergraduate participants (N = 976) completed open-ended descriptions of their religious and spiritual struggles, the Religious and Spiritual Struggles Scale (RSS), and a quantitative measure of religious belief salience. Qualitative description showed that the themes emerging from open-ended descriptions generally fell within the broad domains of the RSS though some descriptions reflected more contextualized struggles. Scores derived from the open-ended responses to assess RSS domains achieved evidence of reliability, and quantitative correlational analyses provided support for convergent and discriminant validity with the RSS. Correlations revealed a mix of similar and divergent associations between methods of assessing religious and spiritual struggles and religious belief salience. Open-ended descriptions of religious and spiritual struggles may yield reliable and valid information that is related to but distinct from assessments relying on closed-ended items.

The Experience and Correlates of God’s Silence among Christians

“…According to the respondents, the experience of God's silence is a long-term (lasting from a month to a year or longer) state (occurring occasionally, every few days), co-occurring with the lack of inner joy derived from relationship with God. This finding is supported by earlier studies on the outcomes of religious and spiritual struggles, as these struggles are a significant predictor of high emotional distress; they are positively related to depressive symptoms, anxiety, state anger, and loneliness and negatively related to life satisfaction and meaning in life in both clinical and nonclinical samples (Exline et al 2015;Zarzycka 2017;Zarzycka et al 2020;Wilt et al 2020). Struggles affect mental health in two ways:…”

“…Divine struggles, which include the experience of God's silence, are relatively frequent among Christians (cf. Wilt et al 2020), and 67% of respondents in a representative Polish sample admitted that they experienced tensions in their relationship with God (Zarzycka 2017). The COVID-19 pandemic situation also influenced the amount of religious and spiritual struggles experienced by Christians (Dein et al 2020); this was the case in Poland too (Boguszewski et al 2020;Kowalczyk et al 2020;Sulkowski and Ignatowski 2020).…”

“…This means that it should not be understood exclusively in terms of divine struggle, which is consistent with the findings of qualitative studies (cf. Wilt et al 2020). According to the respondents, the experience of God's silence is a long-term (lasting from a month to a year or longer) state (occurring occasionally, every few days), co-occurring with the lack of inner joy derived from relationship with God.…”

“…Durà-Vilä 2017;Girrell 2018;Luhrmann 2012;Mandt-Anfindsen 2016). The amount of qualitative research on the issues of divine struggles in the psychology of religion is still relatively modest, and there is a clear disproportion between research on the sense of divine presence in various types of experiences of self-transcendence (Yaden et al 2017) and research on the experience of God's silence in religious people (Wilt et al 2020). What is explored in studies on divine struggles is, above all, the sense of guilt and anger experienced when God is perceived as rejecting/punishing and the doubts experienced when He is perceived as inaccessible (Exline et al 2015;Zarzycka 2017) rather than God's silence as a normative religious or spiritual crisis.…”

Religious and spiritual struggles and coping amidst the COVID-19 pandemic: A qualitative study.

“…Although the RSS is a quantitative measure, the various domains of R/S struggles outlined in this model have the potential to guide qualitative exploration of the subject. For example, Wilt et al (2020) utilized a mixed-method design, using both qualitative and quantitative measurements, to assess R/S struggles and found that the codes from open-ended descriptions demonstrated convergent validity when compared to the RSS, suggesting the conceptual similarities between these two methods for assessing R/S struggles.…”