Culturally appropriate measures of spirituality

A number of spirituality measures have been developed for investigating relationships between spirituality and health, and have been used to assess spirituality in African-American populations. However, the majority of these measures utilize researcher imposed definitions of spirituality. Findings documenting any relationships between spirituality and health in African-Americans are limited because spirituality measures may not be assessing cultural constructs of spirituality as defined by African-Americans themselves. However, no research has been done evaluating the cultural appropriateness of various spirituality measures for African-Americans.

The purpose of this systematic review and analysis of the extant literature on measures of spirituality is to evaluate the construct validity and reliability of instruments used to measure the construct of spirituality in the African-American population.

Findings indicate that spirituality measures used in research exploring health and illness are not culturally appropriate for measuring spirituality in African-Americans. Thirty-five studies and five measures of spirituality met the inclusion criteria. Most of the spirituality measures were developed in primarily Caucasian-American samples. African-Americans were represented in 71% of the studies (n=25) using spirituality measures in health research. Distinct cultural attributes of African-American spirituality were omitted in most of the spirituality measures.

Given the uniqueness of African-American spirituality, it is imperative that researchers who are interested in the study of spirituality and health and illness exercise care in the ways they measure the construct. Development of a culturally appropriate and sensitive measure of spirituality in African-Americans is suggested to strengthen the quality of research in this area.