Assessment, Statistics, and Research

Corona Chapel/ Canterbury/Geoff Sutton 2023 Scale name:      Duke University Religion Index (DUREL) Scale overview The Duke University Religion Index (DUREL) is a 5-item measure of religious participation. The Index measures three dimensions of religiosity: 1. Organizational Religious Activity (ORA) 2. Nonorganizational Religious Activity (NORA) 3. Intrinsic Religiosity (IR; also called subjective religiosity) Authors: Koenig et al. (1997). Response Type The DUREL is a self-report scale. Two questions ask about frequency of activity on a 1 to 6 scale. The two items vary slightly in wording. Three items reflect religious experience and are rated on a 5-point scale from 1 = Definitely not true to 5 = Definitely true of me Subscales = 3- see names above Sample items 1. How often do you attend church or other religious meetings? 2. How often do you spend time in private religious activities, such as prayer, meditation, or Bible study? 3. In my life, ...

  Mental health professionals have recognized the importance of religion and spirituality to wellbeing. I have seen intake forms that ignore spirituality or ask only about a person’s religious identity or if they would like a visit from a chaplain or clergy during a hospitalization. Clinicians can reasonably ask how to explore the importance of spirituality to treatment without being overly intrusive or disrespectful when a patient does not volunteer relevant information. David Hodge (2013) offers four screening questions based on his review of the literature (p. 98). I offer a paraphrase of Hodge’s suggestions and suggest consulting his chapter, which I found in my university library (see reference below). Each question is tied to a one-word therapeutic purpose. 1. Importance How important is spiritual or religious faith to you? 2. Affiliation Do you attend religious services? Do you participate in any groups that would be considered religious or spiritual? 3. Resour...

The Brief RCOPE scale is a 14-item measure of religious coping developed and studied by Kenneth Pargament (e.g., 1997) and his colleagues. The scale is based on coping theory applied to religion and aims to help researchers understand one relationship between people and their religion when they experience a stressful life experience. Research supports two dimensions of coping reflected in the RCOPE scale: positive and negative. These two dimensions are the basis for two subscales of the Brief RCOPE labelled accordingly as Positive Religious Coping Subscale (PRC ) and Negative Religious Subscale (NRC ). Positive coping means drawing upon spiritual resources in a way that helps people cope with stressful events. Such people may have a secure relationship with God or a higher power, hold a benevolent worldview, and have positive relationships with religious others. Negative religious coping indicates intrapersonal religious or spiritual struggles . The conflict may be exp...