Abstract:In order to measure a wide spectrum of organized and private religious, spiritual, existential and philosophical practices, the SpREUK-P (SpREUK is the German language acronym of "Spirituality/Religiosity and Coping with Illness") questionnaire was developed as a generic instrument. To account for the fact that institutional religiosity declines, not only in Europe, and to explore the alternative use of various existing esoteric and spiritual resources, the instrument also addresses non-religious forms of spiritual practices. Previously, it was tested in a more secular context and was found to be of relevance for atheistic/agnostic individuals. Now we intended to apply the instrument to 275 Polish individuals with chronic diseases (100% Catholics, 74% women, mean age 56 ± 16 years). The factorial structure of the SpREUK-P's Polish version was similar to the primary version, but lacked an exclusive "spiritual (mind-body) practices" subscale. Factor analysis revealed four main factors, which would explain 67% of the variance, i.e., religious practices (Cronbach's alpha = 0.90), humanistic practices (alpha = 0.87),
OPEN ACCESS