Distinguishing Between Self-Classified Religious and Spiritual Groups of Emerging Adult Males: Conceptual and Psychometric Challenges

Abstract

This study sought to determine whether measures of religion and spirituality could discriminate between emerging adult males who self-identified as both religious and spiritual (B), religious only (R), spiritual only (S), or neither (N). Two religion measures and three spirituality measures were employed to assess the constructs. It was predicted that those who self-identify as religious only would score significantly higher on the religion measures than those who identified as spiritual only, and those that identified as spiritual only would score significantly higher on the spirituality measures than those who identified as religious only. Results supported the first hypothesis, but not the second. The relationship between spirituality and religion measures indicated substantial overlap and the possibility of differential relationships between emerging male and female adults.

Psychometric Properties of the Daily Spiritual Experiences Scale: Support for a Two-Factor Solution, Concurrent Validity, and Its Relationship with Clinical Psychological Distress in University Students

“…Relatedly, it may be that university students do not integrate institutionalized religion and acceptance of others (item 14) and selfless caring (item 13), as these two items loaded most strongly onto Selflessness. University students may be prone to identify as "spiritual, but not religious," making the differentiation between religiosity and spirituality in this population difficult (Handal et al 2014;Handal et al 2016).…”

Development and Psychometric Properties of a Scale of Non-Theistic Spirituality: Contributions of Spirituality to the Locus of Control

“…This method is often used to recruit hidden populations that are difficult for researchers to access (Faugier & Sargeant, 1997) -as it is the case of sceptics and atheists, considering that most of the Portuguese population professes a religious creed (Censos, 2011). In conducting the study, one concern was to ensure representativeness among practising believers, non-practising believers, sceptics and atheists in order to overcome the bias that a sample predominantly of believers might otherwise introduce to the results, as has already been demonstrated in other studies (e.g., Handal et al, 2017;Zinnbauer et al, 1997). To mitigate this effect, the study of Kimball et al (2009) was taken into account, which concluded that individuals from Humanities, in special social sciences, tend to be more secular or less religious, as compared to those from scientific areas.…”

“…In order to solve this, Handal et al (2017) conducted a study in which they sought to verify to what extent spirituality is conceptually independent of religiosity by comparing measures that assess both constructs. The authors concluded that these constructs actually converge and that the hypothesis of their conceptual independence is unsupported by the results.…”

“…The authors concluded that these constructs actually converge and that the hypothesis of their conceptual independence is unsupported by the results. Even so, it was found that the spirituality measures used in the research were all based on theistic models and that the sample was predominantly of religious students (Handal et al, 2017).…”

“…Given the importance of the conceptualisation of spirituality and religiosity in psychometric development, studies such as Handal's are relevant to the state of the art. Considering Handal et al (2017) findings, it was supposed to expand their study by creating a measure of non-theistic spirituality, aiming to contribute to a new avenue of research. It was also intended to compare spirituality and religiosity in relation to the locus of control in order to clarify even more the conceptual demarcation between constructs.…”