Importance of relating with God for spiritual well-being
- Authors: Fisher, John
- Date: 2014
- Type: Text , Thesis
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- Description: The importance of relating with God for Spiritual Well-Being Twenty years of research in spiritual health/well-being culminate in this thesis. My PhD (1998), University of Melbourne, presented a Four Domains Model of Spiritual Health/Well-Being. This formed the theoretical base for several spiritual well-being questionnaires, presented in my EdD (2009), University of Ballarat. The main instrument, Spiritual Health And Life-Orientation Measure (SHALOM), proposed a novel method of assessing quality of relationships which are posited as reflecting spiritual well-being. These relationships are of each person with themselves, others, the environment and/or with a Transcendent Other (God). Instead of just investigating lived experiences, SHALOM asks for two responses to each item. Each respondent’s lived experience is compared with their stated ideals. Studies presented herein show that this double-response method, comparing ideal with actual, provides a statistically stronger measure of quality of relationships than lived experiences alone, thus spiritual well-being. Eighteen publications included in this thesis relate to studies of spiritual well-being in educational, healthcare and general community settings. A total of 52 studies, using SHALOM with 41686 people from 27 countries, have shown that, of the four sets of relationships measured by SHALOM, relating with God explains greatest variance in spiritual well-being, so is therefore most important. An international study with people involved with, as well as some opposed to, spirituality and religious education led to a generic form of SHALOM, in which the theistic words were replaced by ‘Transcendent’, with 19 alternatives provided from which to select preferred Transcendent, or none. This project revealed that relating with God, as Transcendent, provides greatest support for a person’s relating with self and others, in contrast to help provided by non-theistic and non-religious Transcendents and not believing in Transcendents. This research implies that researchers need to investigate relationship with God in any study of spiritual well-being, whether or not it fits their personal worldview.
- Description: Doctor of Philosophy
The importance of relating with God for spiritual well-being
- Authors: Fisher, John
- Date: 2012
- Type: Text , Book chapter
- Relation: Spirituality: New reflections on theory, praxis and pedagogy p. 147-161
- Full Text: false
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- Description: Motivation to inquire into the nature of spirituality and its relatonship to health, especially in education, came from the 1994 Australian curriculum statements at national and state level. The emergent model of spiritual health and well-being posits four domains in which the quality of relationships reflects the underlying spiritual health and well-being of an individual. These relationships are with oneself, with others, with the environment and/or with God. On presentation of this research, people do not question relationships with self, others and nature as having a genuine place in studies of spiritual health and well-being. It is always the God-factor which provokes discussion. .."From abstract".
You Can’t Beat Relating with God for Spiritual Well-Being: Comparing a Generic Version with the Original Spiritual Well-Being Questionnaire Called SHALOM
- Authors: Fisher, John
- Date: 2013
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Religions Vol. 2013, no. 4 (2013), p. 325-335
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- Description: The Spiritual Health And Life-Orientation Measure (SHALOM) is a 20-item instrument that assesses the quality of relationships of the respondent with self, others, the environment and/or a Transcendent Other. In the Transcendental domain, four of the five items had the words ‘God, ‘Divine’ and ‘Creator’ replaced by the word ‘Transcendent’ to make the survey more generic by removing any implied reference to any god or religion. Invitations to complete a web survey were sent to people who had published papers in spirituality, or belonged to associations for spirituality or religious studies, as well as the Australian Atheist Forum. 409 respondents from 14 geographic regions, completed the survey. Confirmatory factor analysis revealed that the modified, generic form of SHALOM showed acceptable model fit, comprising four clearly delineated domains of spiritual well-being. The paper analyses the results derived from using the modified, generic version and, in comparison with results of applications of the original survey instrument, concludes with discussion of the comparative utility of each of the versions of SHALOM. Further studies with more people are warranted, but, from evidence presented here, it looks like you can’t beat relating with God for spiritual well-being.
Assessing spiritual well-being: relating with God explains greatest variance in spiritual well-being among Australian youth
- Authors: Fisher, John
- Date: 2013
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: International Journal of Childrens Spirituality Vol. 18, no. 4 (November 2013), p. 306-317
- Full Text: false
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- Description: How do we set standards in assessing spiritual well-being (SWB)? Most measures provide only scores on arbitrary scales. Therefore, if the questions differ, the scores are likely to as well. This paper reports on two scales developed with 460 Australian secondary school students, with diverse cultural and religious backgrounds, from state, Catholic, Christian Community and independent schools. The four domains model of spiritual health/well-being was the theoretical base from which 12 items were developed to reflect quality of relationships with each of self, others, environment and God/the Divine. The instrument with the five top-scoring items in each domain, known as Spiritual Health And Life-Orientation Measure (SHALOM), has been sought for use in over 200 studies in 20 languages. The second-highest sets of five items were extracted and found to form statistically valid factors, for a new instrument called SWBQ2. As would be expected, the mean values for the factor scores varied between SHALOM and SWBQ2, overall and by school type. However, regression analyses of the lived experience scores showed that relating with God provided greatest explanation of variance in SWB, on both measures. A double-response method introduced for SHALOM was also used with SWBQ2 to compare each person's lived experience with their ideals, better reflecting quality of relationships, rather than just the arbitrary scores. There was negligible difference in dissonance scores on the four factors in both measures, that is, in comparing the difference between ideals and lived experiences. This method showed consistency in the quality of relationships reflecting SWB, contrasted with variance shown using only lived experience, as mentioned above. Relating with God was again most influential on SWB. These findings have implications for methods used in assessing SWB as well as outcomes.
- Description: C1
- Description: 2204 Religion and Religious Studies
God counts for children's spiritual well-being
- Authors: Fisher, John
- Date: 2015
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: International Journal of Childrens Spirituality Vol. 20, no. 3-4 (2015), p. 191-203
- Full Text: false
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- Description: Over the last three decades, qualitative studies of children's spirituality have variously mentioned God. During this time, nearly 300 quantitative measures of spirituality and well-being have been developed and employed with youth and adults. However, very little similar work has been done with children. An article in this journal reported development of a purported spiritual sensitivity scale. That paper is critiqued here on the basis of its statistical methods as well as its failure to mention God in a study with Australian Catholic school students. In this paper, spiritual well-being (SWB) is taken as being reflected in the quality of relationships that people have with themselves, with others, with the environment and/or with God. Empirical evidence derived from extensive studies with primary school children in State, Catholic, Christian community and other independent schools in Australia reveals that an instrument called Feeling Good, Living Life is a statistically sound spirituality measure for children. Of the four sets of relationships reflecting SWB, relationship with God explains greatest variance in SWB overall. In this respect, relationship with God is most important for SWB among primary school students, just as other studies have shown it to be among youth and adults.
Selecting the best version of SHALOM to assess spiritual well-being
- Authors: Fisher, John
- Date: 2016
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Religions Vol. 7, no. 5 (2016), p. 1-12
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- Description: This paper extends the reporting of contemporary use of the Spiritual Health and Life-Orientation Measure (SHALOM), which provides flexibility to researchers, enabling them to choose the version of the instrument that best suits the cohort under investigation. SHALOM was built on a solid theoretical foundation, provided by the Four Domains Model of Spiritual Health/Well-Being. It comprises 20 items that assess spiritual well-being, as reflected in the quality of relationships that each person has with themselves, others, the environment, and/or with God. Summary results are reported from 30 recent studies. SHALOM provides a unique form of assessment that is statistically stronger than just assessing lived experiences, in that spiritual harmony/dissonance is studied by comparing each person’s “lived experiences” with her/his “ideals” for spiritual well-being. SHALOM has been sought for use with hundreds of studies in 29 languages, in education, healthcare and wider community. A generic form of SHALOM was developed to expand the Transcendental domain to include more than God. However, recent studies have shown that relating with God is most important for spiritual well-being. The best version of SHALOM to assess spiritual well-being depends on the needs of the clients/participants and the project goals of the researcher. This will involve a selection between the original form of Spiritual Well-Being Questionnaire-SHALOM for comparison with other measures and investigation of characteristics influencing spiritual well-being; or the dissonance method for spiritual care; and either the original or the generic version of SHALOM for use with non-religious/secular participants. © 2016 by the author; licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.