Examining whether spirituality predicts subjective well-being: How to avoid tautology.

Abstract

Spirituality may help people to maintain a high level of well-being despite adversity, but several studies that claim to support this statement have used spirituality scales and outcome measures that have overlapping content. This practice seems to be widespread: In an exploratory survey of eight well-cited journals we found that 26 of 58 studies used a spirituality scale that contains 25% or more of well-being items to examine whether spirituality predicts well-being or distress. These spirituality questionnaires would be more appropriate for use as indicators of the domain of quality of life called spiritual well-being. We urge researchers to only use spirituality questionnaires of which less than 25% of the items refer to emotional well-beingsuch as the SWB Questionnaire or the Spiritual Attitude and Involvement List-when investigating the causal relationship between spirituality and emotional well-being.

Positive mental health among cancer survivors: overlap in psychological well-being, personal meaning, and posttraumatic growth

“…The overlap between these measures will artificially increase the strength of their association [31], so one may wrongly conclude that personal meaning leads to psychological well-being or vice versa. Furthermore, measuring both constructs increases the problem of multiple testing, because the same phenomena are measured more often.…”

Presenting a 4-Item Spiritual Well-Being Index (4-ISWBI)

“…Undoubtedly, spiritual well-being is a complex construct, often perceived as comprising of four domains, e.g., by National Interfaith Coalition on Aging (NICA), Fisher (1998), Waaijman (2006, and Garssen et al (2016). Each of the items in the 4-ISWB Index provides a summary view of respondents' perceptions of the quality of relationships in each of the four specified areas, which constitute SWB, and not just a title.…”

“…Moberg (2011) lists eighteen different types of spirituality, and Koenig et al (2001Koenig et al ( , 2012 add even more. On top of this uncertainty, controversy also surrounds the relationship between spirituality and well-being, with some authors claiming that spirituality is usurping or duplicating areas more appropriately related to psychology or sociology (Garssen et al 2016;Koenig 2008;MacDonald et al 2015). The influence of spirit on health has been a point of discussion from around 400BC, in Hippocrates' time (Adams 1939), as well as in Chinese medicine.…”

Psychosis or Spiritual Emergency: The Potential of Developmental Psychopathology for Differential Diagnosis

“…Increased secularism in Western culture has seen a decrease in the overtly religious connotations of the term spiritualty (Chochinov & Cann, 2005), and empirical studies have demonstrated that religiousness and spiritualty are independent dimensions (Saucier & Skrzypińska, 2006). Indeed, spirituality is increasingly being recognized as an important facet of many people's lives, including those who do not adhere to a particular set of religious beliefs (Garssen, Visser, & de Jager Meezenbroek, 2016). Thus, it has been argued that spirituality is a broader concept than religion, which may be seen as institutionalized codifications through which one's spirituality may be articulated (Brady, Peterman, Fitchett, Mo, & Cella, 1999).…”