Defining and Measuring Spirituality in South African Specialist Psychiatry

• Published in: Journal of religion and health Vol. 54; no. 5; pp. 1839 - 1855
• Main Authors: van Rensburg, A. B. R. Janse, Poggenpoel, M., Myburgh, C. P. H., Szabo, C. P.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York Springer 01-10-2015; Springer US; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Aging; Clinical Psychology; Humans; Medicine; Medicine & Public Health; Original Paper; Psychiatry; Public Health; Qualitative Research; Religion; Religious Studies; South Africa; Spirituality; Studies; Surveys and Questionnaires; South Africa; Definition; Spirituality; Psychiatric practice; Model construction; Measuring
• ISSN: 0022-4197; 1573-6571
• DOI: 10.1007/s10943-014-9943-y

To define the meaning of "spirituality" in a South African phenomenological, theory-generating qualitative inquiry, theory construction methodology was used. This refers to the tradition of nursing theory development, where a central core concept identified from the integrated data—in this case, interviews and the literature content—had to be defined. A major focus of the study was to distinguish spirituality from religion. The denotative and connotative meanings of "spirituality" were explored to establish the components for a definition. The attributes of this definition included that spirituality constitutes a "quality", a "journey", a "relationship" as well as a "capacity". While these items derived from this local definition of spirituality can be proposed for inclusion in a questionnaire for measuring spirituality in a South African context, the limits of the scope of the explorative qualitative inquiry from which it was derived must be considered.