Date of Award

1-1999

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Psychology (PsyD)

Department

Graduate Department of Clinical Psychology

Abstract

Research results indicated the Spiritual Well-being Scale, developed by Ellison and Paloutzian (Paloutzian & Ellison, 1982; Ellison, 1983) suffered from ceiling effects (Ledbetter, et al, 1991). This suggested the Spiritual Well-being Scale might not adequately measure the construct of spiritual well-being, which has implications for the usefulness of the instrument. The purpose of this study was to show that spiritual disciplines are an essential part of spiritual health. Thus, the inclusion of aspects of the spiritual disciplines in the Spiritual Well-being Scale would: 1) reduce the ceiling effects of the scale, 2) increase the variability of the scale, and 3) improve the validity of the scale. Results showed that responses to the spiritual discipline questions included in the Spiritual Well-being Scale - Revised reduced the ceiling effects significantly. Variability of the scale was also improved. Factor analysis revealed two main factors, religious well-being and existential well-being, with spiritual discipline items loading heavily onto the religious well-being factor.

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