Religion, Spirituality and Health Research: Warning of Contaminated Scales.
The relationship between religiosity, spirituality and health has received increasing attention in the academic literature. Studies involving quantitative measurement of religiosity and/or spirituality (R/S) and health have reported many positive associations between these constructs. The quality of various measures, however, is very important in this field, given concerns that some measures of R/S have been contaminated with indicators of mental health. When this occurs, that is when R/S is defined and measured a priori, this subsequently guarantees a positive association between R/S and health (especially mental health). Such associations are called tautological, which involves correlating a construct with itself, thus producing associations that are uninterpretable and misleading. In this article, concerns about the measurement of R/S are discussed, examples of contaminated and potentially probelmatic measures of R/S are noted, and recommendations are made regarding uncontaminated measures of R/S that should be used in future studies of R/S and health.
Duke Scholars
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Related Subject Headings
- Spirituality
- Social Psychology
- Religion and Psychology
- Mental Health
- Humans
- Health Status
- 5203 Clinical and health psychology
- 4206 Public health
- 1117 Public Health and Health Services
Citation
Published In
DOI
EISSN
Publication Date
Volume
Issue
Start / End Page
Location
Related Subject Headings
- Spirituality
- Social Psychology
- Religion and Psychology
- Mental Health
- Humans
- Health Status
- 5203 Clinical and health psychology
- 4206 Public health
- 1117 Public Health and Health Services