Assessment, Statistics, and Research

  Scale name: God Images (4 different but related scales) Scales overview The researchers evaluated 16-items describing different god-images. Confirmatory factor analysis yielded four factors, which are the four subscales each having four items. Authors: Nguyen & Zuckerman (2016)   Response Type All items are rated on a 7-point Likert-type rating: 1 (This does NOT reflect my belief AT ALL) to 7 (This reflects my belief COMPLETELY). Subscales (4) with a sample item (each scale has 4 items)            1. Relational God I feel I am close to God            2. God-as-provider Those who believe in God will be rewarded.            3. God-as-ruler Events that happen in this world are part of God’s plan.            4. God-as-creator                      God made the world and all the creatures in it. Psychometrics See the 2016 article below for the results of factor analysis, differences between men and women, and the relationship of God images to other mea

  Scale name:   Inventory of Complicated Spiritual Grief 2.0 Scale overview The ICSG 2.0 is a 28-item scale. Participants are asked to think about their loss and respond to items to express their beliefs about their feelings. The second version was published as ICSG 2.0 in 2019. Authors: Laurie A. Burke and others (2014) - see reference below For Version 2.0 See Burke et al., 2019 and Burke et al., 2021 Response Type All items are rated on a 5-point Likert-type rating. Subscales : The authors list items associated with three subscales: 1. Insecurity with God 2. Disruption in Religious Practice 3. Estrangement from Spiritual Community Sample items   I’m confused as to why God would let this happen.  People in my spiritual community don’t want me to express my grief much or at all.   Reliability and Validity See the publications for details. Internal consistency is strong. Experts and focus group participants provided evidence of content validity for this revi

Two scales measure perspectives on the sacredness of parenting (Murray-Swank et al., 2006) and two others look at spirituality and pregnancy (Mahoney et al., 2009).  The authors advise researchers that they may change the word "baby" to other child age labels depending on the age of the children in their study. Thus, researchers may use labels of "toddler," "child," or "teen" in place of "baby." Spirituality Although the authors use the word God , the instructions invite participants to use their own word for the deity. Following is a copy of the instructions. Notice the different term for the scale's name. Revised Manifestation of God in Parenting Directions: Some of the following questions use the word "God." Different people use different terms for God, such as "Higher Power," "Divine Spirit," "Spiritual Force," "Holy Spirit," "Yahweh," "Allah,", &qu

Portsmouth Cathedral, UK; April 2017, Geoff W. Sutton Spiritual Practices Index (SPI) In recent years, researchers have characterized religion and spirituality as ways people find meaning in their lives--that is, religion and spirituality as meaning making systems. It isn't surprising that researchers disagree on a way to define religion and spirituality that encompasses all similar activities. Meanwhile, researchers continue to study various dimensions of religion and spirituality. In this post I will introduce a short scale that might be helpful in research and possibly in a clinical setting. Although it was written to assess Christian Practices, I will suggest how it could be modified. One way to think about the components of faith is three-dimensional, which includes beliefs, practices, and experiences. A few years ago, a group of us studied Christian counseling to discover what Christian counselors actually did that was different from other counselors. We wanted to ge