The Current Status of Measures of Spirituality: A Critical Review of Scale Development

Despite spirituality's growing popularity within psychology, measurement of the construct remains challenging. The difficulty largely arises from disagreement regarding the nature of spirituality per se and its relationship to religiousness. The present paper provides a critical review of scale development practices for 24 measures of spirituality including information pertaining to conceptualization, item generation and revision practices, format, sample characteristics, and psychometric properties. Findings raise theological and methodological concerns, which inform several recommendations for future development and validation of spirituality measures.