Distinguishing religious and spiritual struggles from religiousness and negative emotionality
(2015, January). Data blitz presented at the Psychology of Religion and Spirituality preconference of the 17th annual convention of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, San Diego, CA. The Religious and Spiritual Struggles Scale (RSS) measures an important set of psychological constructs in an underemphasized section of the overlap between religion and well-being. The RSS assesses six domains of religious and spiritual struggle: divine, demonic, interpersonal, moral, doubt, and ultimate meaning. A previous confirmatory factor analysis of a moderately sized sample found good fit for the intended measurement model with six first-order factors. We replicated this model across five large adult samples from the USA (total N = 5,617). Next, we fit a restricted bifactor model to test whether a single general factor of religious/spiritual struggle could explain these factors correlations with each other, religiousness, or negative emotionality. This models balanced loadings supported the mutual viability of multidimensional and unidimensional scoring systems for the RSS. Additionally, we explored a bifactor model with correlated group factors that improved fit statistics. This model maintained the correlations among the original six factors while extracting an ambiguous general factor from the RSS. This general factors strong correlations with religious participation and belief salience suggested that it represents religiousness itself. Allowing religious items to load on the RSS general factor verified this. It also permitted estimation of a second general factor from all RSS items. This second general factor of spiritual struggle correlated fairly strongly with a common factor of neuroticism, depression, anxiety, and stress. The negative emotionality factor also correlated with most of this models independent group factors that correspond to the original dimensions of the RSS, especially Ultimate Meaning struggle. These analyses demonstrate both the discriminant validity of the six domains of religious/spiritual struggles and the complexity of their relationships with religiousness and negative emotionality. As an ancillary purpose of these analyses, we review, demonstrate, and advocate modern categorical structural equation modeling techniques throughout this project.
![Distinguishing Religious and Spiritual Struggles from
Religiousness and Negative Emotionality
Nick Stauner, Joshua B. Grubbs, Julie J. Exline, & Kenneth I. Pargament
The Religious and Spiritual Struggles Scale*
26 items, 6 dimensions:
Over the past few months, I have...
*Exline, Pargament, Grubbs, & Yali (2014). Psychology of Religion & Spirituality, 6(3), 208222.
Example itemDimension
wondered if God really caresDivine
felt attacked by the devil or by evil spiritsDemonic
had conflicts with other people about [R/S] mattersInterpersonal
felt guilty for not living up to my moral standardsMoral
questioned whether life really mattersUltimate Meaning
felt troubled by doubts or questions about [R/S]Doubt](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/datablitz-160202215642/85/Distinguishing-religious-and-spiritual-struggles-from-religiousness-and-negative-emotionality-1-320.jpg)
Distinguishing religious and spiritual struggles from religiousness and negative emotionality
- 1. Distinguishing Religious and Spiritual Struggles from Religiousness and Negative Emotionality Nick Stauner, Joshua B. Grubbs, Julie J. Exline, & Kenneth I. Pargament The Religious and Spiritual Struggles Scale* 26 items, 6 dimensions: Over the past few months, I have... *Exline, Pargament, Grubbs, & Yali (2014). Psychology of Religion & Spirituality, 6(3), 208222. Example itemDimension wondered if God really caresDivine felt attacked by the devil or by evil spiritsDemonic had conflicts with other people about [R/S] mattersInterpersonal felt guilty for not living up to my moral standardsMoral questioned whether life really mattersUltimate Meaning felt troubled by doubts or questions about [R/S]Doubt
- 2. Religiousness r = .50 Divine r = .19 r = .28 Demonic r = .66 r = .34 Interpersonal r = .16 r = .36 Moral r = .45 r = .56 Meaning r = -.15 r = .37 Doubt r = .11 Negative emotionality CFI = .92, RMSEA = .04 (N = 4,306)r = -.01
- 3. .95 .05.91 .07.98 .03CFI = , RMSEA = 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 Divine Demonic Interpersonal Moral Ultimate Meaning Doubt Original RSS measurement model* *Exline et al. (2014). PRS. 2nd-order factor *Restricted bifactor model of the RSS *Reise, Moore, & Haviland (2010). Journal of Personality Assessment, 92(6), 544559. Unrestricted General factor of religious/spiritual struggles Implied by factor correlations: (N = 4,306)
- 4. r = .06 General r = .87 r = .49 Divine r = .06 r = .50 Divine r = .19 r = .58 Meaning r = .02 r = .32 Demonic r = .09 r = .33 Interpersonal r = .04 r = .41 Moral r = -.13 r = .37 Doubt r = .06 r = .56 Meaning r = -.15 r = .28 Demonic r = .66 r = .34 Interpersonal r = .16 r = .36 Moral r = .45 r = .37 Doubt r = .11 (N = 4,306)CFI = .92, RMSEA = .04CFI = .93, RMSEA = .03r = -.01 Negative emotionality Religiousness
- 5. The RSS measures neither distress nor religiousness per se. R/S struggles are independent (but related!) constructs. A way to control religiousness may be embedded in the RSS Caveat: structure and correlations change in multi-group SEM with religiousness Conclusions