Measuring Spirituality in Children

Abstract

Spirituality is an integral part of the study of humanity and resilience. The Youth Spirituality Scale (YSS) was written to be a developmentally appropriate, inclusive measure of spirituality for children. The scale consists of 19 items and one item to identify invalid responding. A pilot study with a diverse sample of 175 youth, ages 7 to 14, suggests the YSS has good internal reliability and a second study with 144 participants ages 8 to 15 indicates it correlates significantly with relevant subscales from the Brief Multidimensional Measurement of Religiousness-Spirituality. Results suggest the measure is a reliable and valid way to assess spirituality in children. Future research to further validate the YSS and explore the relation between spirituality and other factors is recommended.