Daily Measures of Religious/Spiritual Struggles: Relations to Depression, Anxiety, Satisfaction With Life, and Meaning

Prior research suggests robust links between religious/spiritual struggles and lower levels of mental health. This work has examined trait measures of religious/spiritual struggles over various time frames, such as "over the past couple of weeks," and "over the last few months," and "over your lifetime." However, these assessments do not characterize the potentially dynamic and changing day-to-day experience of religious/spiritual struggle as psychological states. The present study used experience sampling methods to assess multiple domains of religious/spiritual struggles (divine, demonic, interpersonal, moral, doubt, and ultimate meaning) each day for 1 week. We included trait measures of these religious/spiritual struggles as well as the measures of mental health (depression, anxiety, satisfaction with life, and meaning in life) prior to and after the experience sampling portion. Participants (N = 316, number of daily reports = 1,980) were undergraduates from a private university in the Great Lakes region of the United States. Daily measures showed reliable within- and between-person variation. Correlational and multilevel path analytic results provided the evidence of convergent and discriminant validity among measures of religious/spiritual struggles. Correlations showed similar patterns of relations between religious/spiritual struggle measures and mental health variables that replicated previous findings. These findings suggest that religious/spiritual struggles may be assessed meaningfully at the daily level. Therefore, the assessments of religious/spiritual struggles at the daily level could facilitate studying the development of religious/spiritual struggles and their relations to mental health over time.