Skip to main content

Advertisement

SpringerLink
Log in

Introducing the WHOQOL-SRPB BREF: developing a short-form instrument for assessing spiritual, religious and personal beliefs within quality of life

  • Published:
Quality of Life Research Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Purpose

The aim was to develop and conduct preliminary testing of a short-form measure to assess spiritual, religious and personal beliefs (SRPB) within quality of life (QoL).

Methods

Existing data from the 132 items of the WHOQOL-SRPB (n = 5087) obtained in 18 cultures were first analysed to select the ‘best’ performing item from each of the eight SRPB facets. These were integrated with the 26 WHOQOL-BREF items to give 34 items in the WHOQOL-SRPB BREF. A focus group of hospital chaplains reviewed this new short-form. The WHOQOL-SRPB BREF was administered to a UK community sample (n = 230) either with an adapted WHOQOL-SRPB Importance measure or the SWBQ. A subset received both WHOQOL measures twice.

Results

Completed in 8 mins, the WHOQOL-SRPB BREF was acceptable and feasible; Importance 5.5 mins. Good internal consistency reliability was found overall (α = 0.85), for the SRPB domain (α = 0.83), and Importance (α = 0.90). Domains were moderately correlated. Domain test–retest reliability was acceptable in both WHOQOL measures, except for SRPB Importance. Sleep was linked with religious beliefs. Hope and wholeness were widely associated with non-spiritual facets. Factor analysis (maximum likelihood) of items largely confirmed the WHOQOL domain structure, adding SRPB as a significant fifth domain. Internally, SRPB distinguished religious from existential beliefs, and was validated by association with personal and transcendental well-being from the SWBQ.

Conclusion

Preliminary evidence shows that the WHOQOL-SRPB BREF is sound for use in, and beyond health care. Extracted from a measure already available in 18 languages, this short-form can be immediately used where such translations exist.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  1. Whitford, H. S., Oliver, I. N., & Peterson, M. J. (2008). Spirituality as a core domain in the assessment of quality of life in oncology. Psycho-Oncology, 17(11), 1121–1128.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  2. Costanzo, E. S., Ryff, C. D., & Singer, B. H. (2009). Psychosocial adjustment among cancer survivors: Findings from a national survey of health and well-being. Health Psychology, 28(2), 147–156.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  3. Peterman, A. H., Fitchett, G., Brady, M. J., Hernandez, L., & Cella, D. (2002). Measuring spiritual well-being in people with cancer: the functional assessment of chronic illness therapy—spiritual well-being scale (FACIT-Sp). Annals of Behavioral Medicine, 24, 49–58.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  4. Zinnbauer, B. J., Pargament, K., & Scott, A. B. (1999). The emerging meanings of religiousness and spirituality: Problems and prospect. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 67, 889–919.

    Google Scholar 

  5. O’Connell, K. A., & Skevington, S. M. (2005). The relevance of spirituality, religion and personal beliefs to health-related quality of life: Themes from focus groups in Britain. British Journal of Health Psychology, 10(3), 379–398.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  6. Koenig, H. G. (2008). Concerns about measuring “Spirituality” in research. Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, 196(5), 349–355.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  7. Chambers, L. W., MacDonald, L. A., & Tugwell, P. (1982). The McMaster Health Index questionnaire as a measure of quality of life for patients with rheumatoid disease. Journal of Rheumatology, 9, 780–784.

    PubMed  CAS  Google Scholar 

  8. Nelson, C. J., Rosenfeld, B. J., Breitbart, W., & Galietta, M. (2002). Spirituality, religion, and depression in the terminally ill. Psychosomatics, 43(3), 213–220.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  9. Bekelman, D. B., Parry, C., Curlin, F. A., Yamashita, T. E., Fairclough, D. L., & Wamboldt, F. S. (2010). A comparison of two spirituality instruments and their relationship with depression and quality of life in chronic heart failure. Journal of Pain and Symptom Management, 39(3), 515–526.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  10. The WHOQOL Group. (1998). The World Health Organization quality of life assessment (WHOQOL): Development and general psychometric properties. Social Science and Medicine, 46(12), 1569–1585.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  11. Brady, M. J., Peterman, A. H., Fitchett, G., Mo, M., & Cella, D. (1999). A case for including spirituality in quality of life measurement in oncology. Psycho-Oncology, 8(5), 417–428.

    Article  PubMed  CAS  Google Scholar 

  12. Cohen, S. R., & Mount, B. M. (2000). Living with cancer: “Good” days and “bad” days—what produces them? Cancer, 89(8), 1854–1865.

    Article  PubMed  CAS  Google Scholar 

  13. Mueller, P. S., Plevak, D. J., & Rummans, T. A. (2001). Religious involvement, spirituality, and medicine: Implications for clinical practice. Mayo Clinic Proceedings, 76, 1225–1235.

    Article  PubMed  CAS  Google Scholar 

  14. O’Connell, K. A., Saxena, S., Skevington, S. M., & WHOQOL—HIV Group. (2004). WHOQOL-HIV for quality of life assessment among people living with HIV and AIDS: Results from the field test. AIDS Care, 16(7), 882–889.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  15. Aaronson, N. K. (1990). Quality of life research in cancer clinical trials: A need for common rules and language. Oncology, 4, 59–66.

    PubMed  CAS  Google Scholar 

  16. Skevington, S. M., Day, R., Chisholm, A., & Trueman, P. (2005). How much do doctors use quality of life information in primary care? Testing the trans-theoretical model of behaviour change. Quality of Life Research, 14(4), 911–922.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  17. Skevington, S. M., Sartorius, N., Amir, M., & the WHOQOL Group. (2004). Developing methods for assessing quality of life in different cultural settings: The history of the WHOQOL instruments. Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology, 39(1), 1–8.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  18. The WHOQOL Group. (1995). The World Health Organisation Quality of Life assessment (WHOQOL): Position paper from the world health organisation. Social Science and Medicine, 41, 1403.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  19. O’Connell, K. A., & Skevington, S. M. (2010). Spiritual, religious, and personal beliefs are important and distinctive to assessing quality of life in health: A comparison of theoretical models. British Journal of Health Psychology, 15, 729–748.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  20. The WHOQOL SRPB Group. (2006). A cross-cultural study of spirituality, religion, and personal beliefs as components of quality of life. Social Science and Medicine, 62(6), 1486–1497.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  21. The WHOQOL Group. (1998). Development of the World Health Organization WHOQOL-BREF quality of life assessment. Psychological Medicine, 28, 551–558.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  22. Saxena, S., Carlson, D., Billington, R., Orley, J., & WHOQOL-Group. (2001). The WHO quality of life assessment instrument (WHOQOL-Bref): The importance of its items for cross-cultural research. Quality of Life Research, 10(8), 711–721.

    Article  PubMed  CAS  Google Scholar 

  23. Skevington, S. M., & O’Connell, K. A. (2004). Can we identify the poorest quality of life? Assessing the importance of quality of life using the WHOQOL-100. Quality of Life Research, 13(1), 23–34.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  24. Gomez, R., & Fischer, J. W. (2003). Domains of spiritual well-being and development and validation of the spiritual well-being questionnaire. Personality and Individual Differences, 35, 1975–1991.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  25. Tabachnick, B. G., & Fidell, L. S. (2007). Using multivariate statistics (5th ed.). Boston: Allyn and Bacon.

    Google Scholar 

  26. Gorsuch, R. L. (1986). Factor analysis. Hillsdale: Erlbaum.

    Google Scholar 

  27. Streiner, D. L., & Norman, G. R. (2008). Health measurement scales (4th ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  28. Hair, J. F., Anderson, R. E., Tatham, R. L., & Black, W. C. (1999). Multivariate data analysis (5th ed.). Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall.

    Google Scholar 

  29. Kline, P. (2000). Handbook of psychological testing (2nd ed.). London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  30. Miller, J. F., McConnell, T. R., & Klinger, T. A. (2007). Religiosity and spirituality: Influence on quality of life and perceived patient self-efficacy among cardiac patients and their Spouses. Journal of Religion and Health, 46, 299–313.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  31. Higginson, I. J., & Donaldson, N. (2004). Relationship between three palliative care outcome scales. Health and Quality of Life Outcomes, 2, 68–75.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  32. Bolger, A. (2010). Pope warns against ‘aggressive secularism’. Retrieved November 6, 2010, from http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/aab5fc5a-c1c3-11df-9d90-00144feab49a.html#axzz1Lz0hyHym. (September 16th).

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. WHO Centre for the Study of Quality of Life, Department of Psychology, University of Bath, Claverton Down, Bath, BA2 7AY, UK

    Suzanne M. Skevington, Keely Sarah Gunson & Kathryn Ann O’Connell

Authors
  1. Suzanne M. Skevington
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Keely Sarah Gunson
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Kathryn Ann O’Connell
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Suzanne M. Skevington.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Skevington, S.M., Gunson, K.S. & O’Connell, K.A. Introducing the WHOQOL-SRPB BREF: developing a short-form instrument for assessing spiritual, religious and personal beliefs within quality of life. Qual Life Res 22, 1073–1083 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11136-012-0237-0

Download citation

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11136-012-0237-0

Keywords

Search

Navigation