Validation of the Daily Spiritual Experience Scale in a group of black South African students

Abstract

This study’s principal aim was to statistically validate the Daily Spiritual Experience Scale (DSES) in a group of black South African students. In order to do so, the research objectives were:  to investigate the internal consistency reliability of the DSES;  to investigate factorial validity of the DSES; and  to investigate the convergent and discriminant validity of the DSES within a black South African student population. A literature review was done to become familiar with the theoretical conceptualisation of the constructs spirituality, spiritual well-being and complete mental health. The nature and methodology of scale validation was also studied. Data was collected by means of the following psychometric instruments: The Daily Spiritual Experience Scale (DSES) (Underwood & Teresi, 2002), Mental Health Continuum – Short Form (MHS-SF) (Keyes, 2002, 2006; Keyes et al., 2008) and the Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ) (Kroenke, Spitzer & Williams, 2001). Data was analysed by using mainly the Mplus Version 8.2 (Muthén & Muthén, 1998-2017) statistical analysis software program, although the SPSS (IBM Corporation, 2018) was also used. Statistical measurement models were identified that proved to have a good statistical fit and these models were used to analyse the data for validation purposes. The findings were that the DSES had good psychometric properties and showed the same unidimensional factor structure found by the original authors of the DSES. Convergent validity was found with significant positive correlation of the DSES with the three dimensions of the MHC namely emotional, psychological and social well-being. Divergent validity was found for the DSES showing an insignificant negative correlation with the PHQ. Limitations of the study were indicated and recommendations for future research were provided. This study was successful in meeting the objectives which lead to an adequate answering for the research question.