Promoting spiritual well-being: a quasi-experimental test of an element of Hay and Nye's theory of children's spirituality

This study is one of the first tests of key implicit claims of Hay and Nye's theory of children's spirituality and spiritual development. Two quasi-experimental studies tested two claims: that exposure to six conditions posited as fostering relational consciousness in a programme of spiritual formation promotes spiritual well-being; that the effect of the conditions continues after exposure ends. The results for Study One revealed that length of exposure to any of the six conditions was not a significant predictor of spiritual well-being, F(3, 179) = 1.49, p = 0.22. Study Two results indicated that as the length of time since exposure increased so did spiritual well-being, r(38) = 0.39, p = 0.01 at the bivariate level, and F(4, 35) = 2.4, p = 0.06 in the regression. These results reveal a possible relationship between exposure to the six conditions and spiritual well-being.