Development and Initial Validation of a Spiritual Support Subscale for the MOS Social Support Survey

Abstract

While spirituality and religious practices are important in coping with illness or other crises, there are few ways of assessing support that people receive from members of their spiritual communities. The goal of this study was to validate a new spiritual support subscale for the Medical Outcomes Study Social Support scale (MOS-SSS). Questions for the subscale were formed based on responses of 135 breast cancer survivors who were interviewed about their cancer experience. Exploratory factor analysis resulted in four specific factors of the MOS-SSS: emotional/informational, tangible, affectionate, and spiritual support. The new spiritual support subscale has adequate reliability and validity and may be useful in assessing an area of support that is not always addressed.

The Medical Outcome Study Social Support Survey (MOS‐SSS): A psychometric systematic review

“…Thirty‐two studies tested internal consistency reliabilities using Cronbach alpha; one study calculates item reliability using Rasch analysis (Kim et al, 2017). Thirty‐one studies reported sufficient internal consistency reliabilities (higher than a desirable value of 0.70), and two studies had a subscale of the MOS‐SSS with Cronbach's alpha slightly lower than the desirable value (0.61–0.65 vs. 0.70) (Levine et al, 2015; Norhayati et al, 2015). Three studies reported overall internal consistency reliabilities but not internal consistency reliabilities for all subscales of the measurement (Gjesfjeld et al, 2008; Mahmud et al, 2004; Margolis et al, 2019).…”

Faith-Based Community Members, Family, and COVID-19: The Role of Family Cohesion, Social Support, and Spiritual Support on Quality of Life, Depression, and COVID-19-Prevention Behaviors

“…Spiritual support. Spiritual support was measured using the spiritual support subscale of the MOS Social Support Survey [58]. This subscale consists of three 5-point Likert-type scale items with the anchors (1) strongly disagree and strongly agree (5), including "Whenever I need it, there is someone I can talk to about spiritual matters", and "Whenever I need help, there is someone who will pray for me (or meditate with me)".…”

“…However, the findings from several previous studies suggest that spiritual support may play an important stress-buffering role for faith-based community members [54][55][56]. Recent scholars have conceptualized spiritual support as perceived support from other faith-based community members and spiritual leaders regarding spiritual matters [57,58]. Seeking spiritual support has been identified as way that many faith-based community members have coped with other major crisis events in the past, such as 11 September [59].…”