On Sunday afternoon, I join our church’s spiritual formation group. I reflected on the odd thing we’re doing. We’re trying to move forward in our spirituality. So I wondered, can you actually measure how spiritual someone is?

So, can you measure spirituality? Due to Spirituality’s subjective experience, researchers examined the experiences and interest levels of both religious and spiritual persons through several questionnaires. In Clinical research, these scales range in topic including: spiritual interest, well-being, coping, and spiritual needs.

Researchers have examined more than 35 questionnaires for measuring spirituality. The relationship between spirituality and health is complex and in some settings even taboo.

So, I had a chance to score myself and you can see below.

How to Measure Spirituality

As a spiritual person who endeavors to enhance my own journey and maturity, I felt both threatened and intoxicated by this notion: we can measure your spirituality.

Measuring religiousness in pre-modern cultures (including our Western one), normally had an intuitive and communal element. You were religiously committed if the community said you were, not if you said you were.

It was the Elder, Priest, or Shaman that confirmed you were a religious/spiritual person. With their expertise, you met the standards of practice and teaching.

In fact, this is still how communities run today.

Probably the best measure of one’s spirituality is not what we say, but what we do.

Flash forward to the 1990s, researchers investigated the role of religion or religiousness and health[ref]Koenig HG, Larson DB. Religion and mental health: Evidence for an association. Int Rev Psychiatry. 2001;13:67–78. doi: 10.1080/09540260124661.[/ref], but since the instant secularism of the West, researchers invented questionnaires for spirituality.

Overall, asking patients who were facing chronic illness was the best way to measure if spirituality inspired better health. They discovered that especially for those suffering with chronic or terminal disease, spirituality improved their health[ref] Brady MJ, Peterman AH, Fitchett G, Mo M, Cella D. A case for including spirituality in quality of life measurement in oncology. Psychooncology. 1999 Sep-Oct; 8(5):417-28.[/ref].

What happens when you have poor spiritual health?

If you scored low on your spirituality wellness with spiritual distress or religious struggle, then you were more likely to experience the following[ref]Breitbart W, Rosenfeld B, Pessin H, Kaim M, Funesti-Esch J, Galietta M, Nelson CJ, Brescia R. Depression, hopelessness, and desire for hastened death in terminally ill patients with cancer. JAMA. 2000 Dec 13; 284(22):2907-11[/ref]

• Higher mortality rates
• More severe depression
• Hopelessness
• Desire for hastened death

You can see why researchers in the clinical setting were curious about whether they could measure spirituality.

If you had poor spiritual health, then you had poor physical and emotional health.

Measuring spirituality and religiousness would have been less encouraged for the scientific mind 60 years ago.

However, with the increasing studies on their connection to physical health, today it may be to our detriment if we don’t practice some form of spiritual check-up.

Often Spirituality lacks a ground in evidence and is left to crystals, salt rocks, and Enya.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that! (Seinfeld voice)

Spirituality doesn’t have to be an airy-fairy enterprise. Spirituality can have real grounding in the body.

Although spirituality is unique and freeing in its emphasis on individual expression, it often exhibits the other extreme: chaotic self-expression without any standards.

Our capacity to cope through illness, disease and death depends on whether we can measure spirituality.

For this reason and many others researchers changed their proposition that human beings were strictly biological in nature (with some social and emotional tacked on later).

Clinical researchers now acknowledge a highly integrated model of human being called: biopsychosocial-spiritual model [ref]Sulmasy DP. Review A biopsychosocial-spiritual model for the care of patients at the end of life. Gerontologist. 2002 Oct; 42 Spec No 3:24-33[/ref]

Different Types of Spirituality Measurement Tools

Concepts

Some measured concepts. Here they came up with four common categories:

1. General spirituality
2. Spiritual well-being
3. Spiritual support
4. Spiritual needs

Function: What Role Does Your Spirituality Play?

Some measured how your spirituality functioned alongside your health.

Beliefs – measured your beliefs and attitudes toward spirituality (Do you believe meditation has value?).[ref]MacDonald D. Spirituality: Description, Measurement, and Relation to the Five Factor Model of Personality. J Pers. 2000;68:153–197[/ref]These were the most stable over time.

Behaviors – what you did privately or publicly in your spiritual practice. Here it was about the number of times you prayed, went to a faith community, etc.[ref]Idler EL, Kasl SV. Religion among disabled and nondisabled persons II: attendance at religious services as a predictor of the course of disability. J Gerontol Soc Sci. 1997;52(6):S306–S316. doi: 10.1093/geronb/52B.6.S306.[/ref]

Emotions – how expressive were you in your spirituality? These studies measured individual’s spiritual states over time. What captivates me about these were how the spiritual state could have been far better than the circumstances.

For others, their spiritual state might be worse because of illness or bereavement. In those cases, addressing their spirituality made all the difference![ref]Emanuel EJ, Fairclough DL, Emanuel LL. Attitudes and desires related to euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide among terminally ill patients and their caregivers. JAMA. 2000;284:2460–2468. doi: 10.1001/jama.284.19.2460[/ref]

In one review, researchers studied hundreds of types of spiritual measurement scales. They then narrowed it down to just 35 that revealed the most promising results[ref]Stéfanie Monod, MD,1 Mark Brennan, PhD,2 Etienne Rochat, Theologian,1 Estelle Martin, PhD,1 Stéphane Rochat, MD MM(ClinEpi),1 and Christophe J. Büla, MD. Instruments Measuring Spirituality in Clinical Research: A Systematic Review. J Gen Intern Med. 2011 Nov; 26(11): 1345–1357. Published online 2011 Jul 2. doi:  10.1007/s11606-011-1769-7[/ref]

Out of those 35, I decided to take 4 Tools and place them here. I’m planning a larger post later, where I can take these tests myself and let you know what I thought of them.

Examples of Spiritual Measurement Tools

Daily Spiritual Experience Scale (DSES)

The Daily Spiritual Experience Scale (DSES) is one of the more simple questionnaires.[ref]Underwood, L. G. & Teresi, J. (2002). The Daily Spiritual Experience Scale: Development, theoretical description, reliability, exploratory factor analysis, and preliminary construct validity using health related data. Annals of Behavioral Medicine, 24, 22-33.[/ref]

The DSES asks 16 questions around ordinary or daily spiritual experiences. It doesn’t explore “hearing voices” or mystical experiences of the extraordinary types.

For those who are not the crystal wearing, chakra aligning types, you’ll appreciate this questionnaire.

DSES verifies how much daily spirituality you experience by the 6-point Likert-type scale: many times a day, every day, most days, some days, once in a while, and never or almost never.

Here’s some of their statements on the scale:

1. I Feel God’s Presence
2. I experience a connection to all life
3. I find strength in my religion or spirituality
4. I find comfort in my religion or spirituality
5. I feel God’s love for me directly
6. I feel God’s love for me through others
7. I am spiritually touched by the beauty of creation

The lower the score the more daily spiritual experiences you’re having.

After I took this test, I appreciated some elements to it. I liked question 16, “In general, how close do you feel to God?” It ranges from “not close at all” to As close as Possible.”

Measuring closeness to “God” or their Spiritual Center is my first go-to when checking in with the spiritual health of my clients.

I’m often surprised by how someone can relate to a supreme being and can simply say how intimate their relationship is with them.

I’ll also ask, “do they feel far from you and distant?” This has less to do with relational intimacy and more to do with proximity or closeness.

Clients in stress can feel their greatest Support is in a galaxy of dispassionate distance.

I scored 45 on the Daily scale and a 3 out of 4 on how close to “God” I felt. I appreciated they offer to make the questionnaire interchangeable regarding terms. If you don’t like the word “God” you can replace it as you wish.

For more information on this scale or to try it out, see Dr. Lynn Underwood here

Spiritual Experience Index (SEI) and SEI -Revised

The Spiritual Experience Index (SEI) and its follow up (SEI-R) measure individual faith and spiritual journey while avoiding any questions related to a specific religious tradition.[ref]Genia, V. (1991). The spiritual experience index: A measure of spiritual maturity. Journal of Religion and Health, 30, 337-347[/ref]

The SEI is a 38-item scale while the SEI-R has reduced its questions to a 23-item scale.  These are rated from “Strongly agree to strongly disagree.”

Here are some samples of the questions:

1. I often feel closely related to a power greater than myself
2. I often feel that I have little control over what happens to me
3. My faith gives my life meaning and purpose
4. My faith is a way of life
5. Ideas from faiths different from my own may increase my understanding of spiritual truth.

Here, the higher the score the more important spiritual experience was while facing illness. Then much like the DSES scale they could rate how spirituality was impacting the client’s coping.

Example of Religious Measurement Tool: Quest Scale

I found the Quest Scale really interesting. Batson and researchers contended that there were three dimensions to religion: intrinsic, extrinsic, and Religion as a Quest. When religious participants saw life as Quest, they “openly faced complex existential questions…and resisting clear-cut, pat answers.”[ref]Batson, C. D. & Schoenrade, P. A. (1991). Measuring religion as a quest: 2.) Reliability concerns. Journal of Scientific Study of Religion, 30, 430-447[/ref]

This scale looks at the inner tension of doubt, religious conflict, and complexity.

This scale is divided up in three sections. The first section is “Readiness to face existential questions without reducing their complexity”

Here are some examples of the questions they asked:

1. I was not very interested in religion until I began to ask questions about the meaning and purpose of my life.
2. I have been driven to ask religious questions out of a growing awareness of the tensions in my world and in my relation to my world.

The second section pertains to how “self-critical” you are. For example:

1. It might be said that I value my religious doubts and uncertainties.
2. For me, doubting is an important part of what it means to be religious.

The third section examines “openness to change.”

1. As I grow and change, I expect my religion also to grow and change.
2. There are many religious issues on which my views are still changing.

I found this Quest Scale to be unique in the way it measures our doubts, ability to change in our beliefs (flexibility), and our readiness to face the harsh realities of life.

Although there are many types of spirituality measurement tools, we need to see them as what they actually do. They give us a sense of what is most important to us.

Related Questions

What is the Spiritual Orientation Index? A person’s spiritual orientation is much like their orientation in other places. Generally, when a client is hospitalized, I try to assess what their religious/spiritual/worldview orientation. We each have an inclination towards a certain perspective, a way to life. A person’s spiritual orientation can include their religious identification, but is not limited to that.

What are the best spiritual scales available on PDF? One of my favorite spirituality scales available by PDF is by the ACPE (Association for Clinical Pastoral Education). You can find it here.My other favorite pdf out there is from Dr. Altemeyer located here. Dr. Altemeyer offers the scales I have here in depth with research.

Try out a few and comment below on your experience.