Download Free Development and Validation of the Inclusive Spirituality Index Book PDF
ByJanet Lynn Muse-Burke
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“What you don’t know would make a great book.” –Sydney Smith
Synopsis
The purpose of this study was to develop and validate a self-report measure of spirituality (i.e., the Inclusive Spirituality Index; ISI), which can be used with religious and nonreligious people. Spirituality was defined as the part of one's identity that involves purpose and meaning in life, interdependence with others, inner peace, and transcendence. A two-stage process was employed to create the ISI. Stage I concerned scale construction and examined the content validity and clarity of the ISI. Nineteen experts of religion and spirituality rated an initial item pool of 57 items. Inter-rater agreement analyses determined that 10 items should be dropped, leaving a final index containing 47 items. In Stage 2, 251 respondents were solicited to investigate the ISI's reliability and validity. First, the internal consistency of the ISI and two of its subscales (i.e., Interdependence with Others and Inner Peace) was found to meet the criterion of .70. However, the internal consistency of the Purpose and Meaning in Life and Transcendence Subscales was insufficient to meet the .70 criterion. Second, data from twenty-five respondents revealed mean test-retest reliability of .810 for the ISI and its subscales (i.e., Purpose and Meaning in Life, Interdependence with Others, Inner Peace, and Transcendence). Third, a confirmatory factor analysis approach was used to examine the factorial construct validity of the ISI, revealing a poor fit to the data (chi2(977) = 1494.989, p = .000; CMIN/DF = 1.530; GFI = .792; AGFI = .760; and CFI = .854). Follow-up exploratory factor analysis revealed a 6-factor model with 38 items, which accounted for 44.93% of the common variance. Lastly, the ISI was compared to other constructs generally associated with spirituality, including psychological well-being, religious fundamentalism, spiritual well-being, and social desirability in an effort to further clarify the nomological net defining Inclusive Spirituality. In general, these analyses confirmed the hypotheses and provided support for the convergent (i.e., psychological well-being, religious fundamentalism), concurrent (i.e., spiritual well-being) and discriminant validity (i.e., social desirability) of the ISI. As such, initial evidence suggests the ISI is a valid and reliable measure, which warrants further development for clinical and research purposes.
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