Assessment, Statistics, and Research

  Assessment name:   Divine Spiritual Struggles Scale Scale overview: The Divine Spiritual Struggles Scale measures the degree of distress experienced by adolescents in their relationship with God or a higher power. Scale data were obtained from a sample of adolescents who reported sexual abuse.   Authors: Ernest Jouriles and others (see scale reference)     Response Type: Four items are rated on a 4-point scale of frequency related to feeling “punished, abandoned, and questioned God’s love” when they thought about sexual abuse in the preceding month. 0 = not at all 1 = somewhat 2 = quite a bit 3 = a great deal Scale items The four items in the scale can be found in the PsycTESTS reference below. Psychometric properties The scale was used in two studies (see Jouriles et al., 2020) with a combined n of 347 adolescents who had a mean age of 13.53 and 13.71, respectively. More than 90% were girls. Most of the girls identified as Christian. Reliability and

  Scale name: Spiritual Abuse Questionnaire (SAQ) Scale overview: The  Spiritual Abuse Questionnaire (SAQ)  is a 17-item self-report questionnaire that uses a 4-point Likert Type response format to measure two dimensions of abuse: Power-based affective wounding and Conditionality. Author: Kathryn Hope Keller   Response Type: 4-point Likert type. The choices are: Strongly disagree, Disagree, Agree, Strongly agree. Subscales and Sample Items: There are two subscales. 1. Power-based Affective Wounding : “At times, I was scolded by my leader and made to feel ashamed and helpless” and “I now feel cynical about church/religious groups.”   2. Conditionality: “I believed I could be totally surrendered to God if I did everything perfectly according to the church/group’s instructions,” and “I believed God would punish me if I didn’t do what my church/group encouraged me to do.” Reliability: Alpha for the 17-item scale was .95 (Keller, 2016). The study sample was 271