A revision of the Spiritual Well-Being Scale

The Spiritual Well-Being Scale (Ellison, 1983) is a 20 item self-report attitudinal measure of one\u27s religious and existential well-being. It has been used extensively as a research measurement of spiritual well-being. Despite its popularity, the scale has several psychometric deficiencies and is still under development. In particular, it lacks adequate reliability data and has a low ceiling effect where scores of highly religious populations cluster at the top end of the scale. Censored scores are indistinguishable and their interpretation is limited. Previous attempts at remedying the ceiling effect problem by changing response scoring have been unsuccessful. The purposes of this study were to remedy the ceiling effect problem by revising the SWB Scale and to provide additional reliability and validity data. The revision consisted of reworded items and some substituted items. Content of the new items was not found in the original scale but was considered essential by other researchers of spiritual well-being. The questionnaire contained the original and revised scales and the Intrinsic Religious Motivation Scale (IRMS) which was used as a validation instrument. The sample consisted of 399 Catholic religious Sisters residing throughout the United States. The revised scale revealed a slightly more normal distribution of scores than the original scale although the measures of central tendency and variability were equivalent in many respects. The primary difference was that fewer participants received the maximum score when using the revised scale and the degree of skew was less. Factor analytic studies of the original scale suggests the presence of one general religious factor but for the revised scale, three factors became apparent. Additional findings supported the initial reliability studies indicating the acceptability of the scale in this area. Validation data was lower than previously attained with the IRMS suggesting the need for further study in this area. The original scale is satisfactory for general research of spiritual well-being but further revision is necessary in order to improve its discrimination of highly religious populations