Spirituality as a Basic Aspect of Personality: A Cross-Cultural Verification of Piedmont's Model

Abstract

This study generally confirms Piedmont's concept of spirituality as a dimension, or set of dimensions of individual differences, traditionally neglected by factor analytic research. Piedmont's model was found to hold in a different culture and with a spirituality questionnaire constructed on the basis of a strategy largely different from that of Piedmont (1999) Piedmont, R. 1999. Does spirituality represent the sixth factor of personality? Spiritual transcendence and the Five-Factor Model.. Journal of Personality, 67(6): 985–1014. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]. An original six-scale Prague Spirituality Questionnaire (PSQ; Rican & Janosova, 2005) was devised. It was constructed for the extremely secularized Czech youth who largely reject organized religion. It was subjected to a joint exploratory factor analysis together with 30 facet scales of the NEO PI–R. The results were similar to those of Piedmont: Six factors were found, unambiguously interpretable as the Big Five plus a sixth factor saturating all of the 6 PSQ scales. Data supporting criterion, as well as construct validity of the PSQ, are also given.