God counts for children's spiritual well-being

Over the last three decades, qualitative studies of children's spirituality have variously mentioned God. During this time, nearly 300 quantitative measures of spirituality and well-being have been developed and employed with youth and adults. However, very little similar work has been done wit...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Fisher, John W. (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
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Published: Taylor & Francis [2015]
In: International journal of children's spirituality
Year: 2015, Volume: 20, Issue: 3/4, Pages: 191-203
RelBib Classification:AE Psychology of religion
CB Christian life; spirituality
KBS Australia; Oceania
KDB Roman Catholic Church
NBC Doctrine of God
Further subjects:B Assessment
B Children
B Spiritual well-being
B God
Online Access: Volltext (Verlag)
Description
Summary:Over the last three decades, qualitative studies of children's spirituality have variously mentioned God. During this time, nearly 300 quantitative measures of spirituality and well-being have been developed and employed with youth and adults. However, very little similar work has been done with children. An article in this journal reported development of a purported spiritual sensitivity scale. That paper is critiqued here on the basis of its statistical methods as well as its failure to mention God in a study with Australian Catholic school students. In this paper, spiritual well-being (SWB) is taken as being reflected in the quality of relationships that people have with themselves, with others, with the environment and/or with God. Empirical evidence derived from extensive studies with primary school children in State, Catholic, Christian community and other independent schools in Australia reveals that an instrument called Feeling Good, Living Life is a statistically sound spirituality measure for children. Of the four sets of relationships reflecting SWB, relationship with God explains greatest variance in SWB overall. In this respect, relationship with God is most important for SWB among primary school students, just as other studies have shown it to be among youth and adults.
ISSN:1469-8455
Contains:Enthalten in: International journal of children's spirituality
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1080/1364436X.2015.1107033