Capturing the Meanings of Religiousness and Spirituality: One Way Down from a Definitional Tower of Babel
This study examined individual and group differences in the meanings attributed to religiousness and spirituality through the use of a policy capturing approach. Twenty-one Christian clergy members and 20 registered nurses judged 60 hypothetical profiles of individuals that differed on 8 religious a...
| Authors: | ; |
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Brill
2002
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| In: |
Research in the social scientific study of religion
Year: 2002, Volume: 13, Pages: 23-54 |
| Further subjects: | B
History of religion
B Social sciences B Religionswissenschaften B Religion & Gesellschaft |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Summary: | This study examined individual and group differences in the meanings attributed to religiousness and spirituality through the use of a policy capturing approach. Twenty-one Christian clergy members and 20 registered nurses judged 60 hypothetical profiles of individuals that differed on 8 religious and spiritual attributes or cues. Multiple regression analyses were conducted to generate separate judgment policies of religiousness and spirituality for each participant, revealing which cues were used by each participant to judge religiousness, and which cues were used to judge spirituality. Results revealed variability in the meanings participants attributed to the two constructs. Differences emerged between the policies of religiousness and spirituality. Policies of religiousness used fewer cues and were more consistent across judges than policies of spirituality, and policies of religiousness were more often characterized by attendance at formal religious services and adherence to church tenets or doctrine than policies of spirituality. Significant group differences in policies of religiousness and spirituality emerged for the types of cues used in the policies; for clergy the central feature of both religiousness and spirituality was most often attendance at formal religious services and adherence to a church’s tenets and doctrine. In contrast, nurses tended to associate religiousness with formal or organizational religion, and spirituality with closeness with God or a sense of inter-connectedness with life and the world. The implications of the results for the study of religiousness and spirituality were also discussed. |
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| Contains: | Enthalten in: Research in the social scientific study of religion
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1163/9789004496347_004 |