Selecting the Best Version of SHALOM to Assess Spiritual Well-Being
Journal Title: Religions - Year 2016, Vol 7, Issue 5
Abstract
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.
Authors and Affiliations
ohn Fisher
Keywords
Related Articles
- EP ID EP25542
- DOI https://doi.org/10.3390/rel7050045
- Views 305
- Downloads 7
Religious Racism. Islamophobia and Antisemitism in Italian Society
Racism and racial prejudice, considered a relic of obsolete and outdated social systems, is emerging in the depths of ultra-modern Western societies with different characteristics from the past but with a surprising an...
Rethinking Amalek in This 21st Century
Twice in the Hebrew Bible—Exodus 17:14–16 and Deuteronomy 25: 17–19—the ancient Israelites were commanded to “blot out” the memory of Amalek, their enemy for all time (as God intended to do as well). Yet, because these...
The Enlightened Self: Identity and Aspiration in Two Communities of Practice
Existing research on religious identity, especially from a narrative perspective, has tended to focus either on accounts of the past (especially occasions of religious change) or on conceptions of religious identity in...
How is Chaplaincy Marginalised—By Our Faith Communities and by Our Institutions and Can We Change It?
This paper reviews the issues confronting chaplaincy/spiritual care in the 21st century. It looks at how faith communities are changing their view of chaplaincy as well how institutions respond. The paper looks at two...
Transpersonal Psychology: Mapping Spiritual Experience
The first Journal of Transpersonal Psychology was published in 1969. Since this signal event, transpersonal psychology has emerged as a field of theory and application. A way has been made in Western psychology for the...