Closeness to God Among Those Doing God's Work: A Spiritual Well-Being Measure for Clergy.

Proeschold-Bell, Rae; Yang, Chongming; Toth, Matthew; Corbitt Rivers, Monica; Carder, Kenneth

Measuring spiritual well-being among clergy is particularly important given the high relevance of God to their lives, and yet its measurement is prone to problems such as ceiling effects and conflating religious behaviors with spiritual well-being. To create a measure of closeness to God for Christian clergy, we tested survey items at two time points with 1,513 United Methodist Church clergy. The confirmatory factor analysis indicated support for two, six-item factors: Presence and Power of God in Daily Life, and Presence and Power of God in Ministry. The data supported the predictive and concurrent validity of the two factors and evidenced high reliabilities without ceiling effects. This Clergy Spiritual Well-being Scale may be useful to elucidate the relationship among dimensions of health and well-being in clergy populations.

NORTH Carolina; HYPOTHESIS; CHRISTIANITY; CLERGY; EXPERIMENTAL design; FACTOR analysis; RESEARCH methodology; PANEL analysis; PSYCHOLOGICAL tests; QUESTIONNAIRES; SPIRITUALITY; WELL-being; PREDICTIVE validity; REPEATED measures design; RESEARCH methodology evaluation

Journal of Religion & Health, 2014, Vol 53, Issue 3, p878

0022-4197

Academic Journal

10.1007/s10943-013-9682-5