- Title
- Developing a spiritual health and life-orientation measure for secondary school students
- Creator
- Fisher, John
- Date
- 1999
- Type
- Text; Conference paper
- Identifier
- http://researchonline.federation.edu.au/vital/access/HandleResolver/1959.17/36959
- Identifier
- vital:2160
- Identifier
- ISBN:ISBN 095770335X
- Abstract
- The problem posed in this project was the development of an instrument to give a balanced assessment of young people’s spiritual health. Spiritual health is a dynamic state of being, which can be reflected in how well people relate in up to four domains of human existence, namely with themselves; with others; with the environment; and/or with a Transcendent Other. A convenience sample of 850 secondary students in State, Catholic, Christian Community and other independent schools in Ballarat and western suburbs of Melbourne were surveyed during 1999 to determine how important they considered each of the four sets of relationships to be for an ideal state of spiritual health (called Life-Orientation). They also expressed how each area reflected their personal experience most of the time (called Spiritual Health). Extensive factor analysis enabled the original 60-item instrument to be reduced to a reliable, compact 25-item Spiritual Health And Life-Orientation Measure (SHALOM for short). Analysis of variance and t-tests revealed significant variations between students’ views when compared by school type, gender, and year level. SHALOM has advantages over previous instruments in that it is balanced across the four domains of spiritual well-being, is more sensitive, and it compares people’s stated ideal position, with their lived experience, not others’, in determining the quality of relationships which constitute their spiritual well-being.
- Publisher
- Mt. Helen: Victoria Research and Graduate Studies Office, University of Ballarat,
- Relation
- Paper presented at Research with a regional/rural focus : proceedings of the University of Ballarat inaugural annual conference, Mt. Helen: Victoria 15th October, 1999 p. 57-63
- Rights
- Copyright Research and Graduate Studies Office, University of Ballarat
- Rights
- Open Access
- Rights
- This metadata is freely available under a CCO license
- Subject
- Spiritual health; High school students; Education; SHALOM
- Full Text
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