Well-being 1 Correlation of Psychological Well-being and Christian Spiritual Well-being at a Small Christian Liberal Arts College in the Urban Midwest

Results support the hypothesis that a spiritual approach to life is correlated with well-being. Christian spiritual well-being and psychological well-being were correlated with a sample of 62 college-aged, mainly caucasian participants (28 males, 34 females) from a small Christian liberal arts college in the urban Midwest using convenience sampling methods. The instruments used were the Shepherd Scale (Basset, Sadler, Kobischen, Skiff, Merrill, Atwater, & Livermore, 1984), which consisted of the two main components of belief and Christian walk, and the psychological well-being scale, containing the six main categories—self-acceptance, positive relations with others, autonomy, environmental mastery, purpose in life, and personal growth. (Ryff, 1989). Both instruments contained Likert-scale ratings to measure psychological well-being and spiritual well-being aspects. Christian spiritual well-being and psychological well-being held significant positive correlation. Results yielded a correlation value between psychological well-being and Christian spiritual well-being of r =.26, p =.04. Two facets of psychological well-being targeted by the researcher for examination, positive relations with others and purpose in life, held no significant positive correlation with spiritual well-being. The researcher controlled for order effects and counter-balanced according to participant’s sex using single-blind experimental methodology. Suggestions for improvement of current instrumentation and methodology are included