Spirituality, Happiness, and Psychological Well-being in 13- to 15-year olds: A Cross-country Longitudinal RCT Study

The moderating role of spirituality and gender in Canadian and Iranian emerging adolescents’ theory of mind and prosocial behavior

Introduction

While research has found a link between ToM and prosociality in terms of caring and helping others which may also vary across cultures, the moderating role of spirituality and culture of this association in emerging adolescence has received little attention.

Methods

The current study empirically “examined” the role of spirituality and gender in relation to ToM and prosocial behavior in Canadian and Iranian emerging adolescents. A total of 300 (153 girls) emerging adolescents (M = 11.502, SD = 2.228) were recruited from Montreal, Canada and Karaj, Iran. A series of double moderation analysis and ANOVA was conducted.

Results and discussion

Results indicated the difference between direct and indirect influences of ToM and its interactions with culture, gender, and spirituality on prosocial behavior. This implies an emerging complex framework which suggests the dynamic nonlinear interactions between these factors. Implications for youth’s social-emotional understanding will be discussed.

The relationship between spiritual health and happiness in medical students during the COVID-19 outbreak: A survey in southeastern Iran

It is necessary to study the various dimensions of health and their affecting factors during the coronavirus disease-19 (COVID-19) pandemic to identify the necessary interventions. The study aims to determine the relationship between spiritual health and happiness in medical students during the COVID-19 outbreak. In this analytical cross-sectional design study, 409 medical students were examined for the state of happiness and spiritual health and the relationship between them. Student information was collected through Web-based sampling by using standard tools from 20 April to 20 June 2020. Medical students completed the demographic questionnaire as well as Oxford Happiness Questionnaire (OHQ) and Paloutzian and Ellison spiritual health questionnaire. The results showed that while the score of spiritual health and happiness was related to factors such as marriage, interest in a field of study, and socioeconomic status, the relationship between spiritual health and happiness was significant (r = 0.72). This study showed that students' happiness scores were not optimal during the COVID-19 pandemic. Due to the strong relationship between spiritual health and happiness scores, spiritual health promotion, in conjunction with other interventions, can be used to improve happiness in this group.

The Daily Spiritual Experience Scale: Empirical Relationships to Resiliency-Related Outcomes, Addictions, and Interventions

The Daily Spiritual Experience Scale (DSES) is a 16-item self-report measure designed to assess a set of experiences that may occur in the context of daily life for many different kinds of people. These include awe, a merciful attitude, giving other-centered love, deep inner peace, finding strength, guidance, or consolation from a transcendent source, among others. The DSES includes theistic and non-theistic language and alternatives, and has proven useful for those from many religions and for the unaffiliated. Since its original publication, it has been translated into over 40 languages, used in hundreds of published studies, and adopted for use in many practical settings. Empirically, the DSES predicts greater resilience, stress buffering, post-traumatic growth, and a sense of meaning in the face of illness, trauma, and daily stressors, as well as less substance abuse and burnout. Intervention studies using the DSES show that a variety of interventions can increase the frequency of these experiences. In this article, we will provide a brief overview of the scale and review its use in the empirical literature with respect to resilience and related outcomes. Findings suggest that the experiences measured by the DSES may serve as a resource for those experiencing distress of various kinds.

Measuring Happiness in Adolescent Samples: A Systematic Review

Background: Happiness is a phenomenon that relates to better mental and physical health and even longevity. There has been an increase in surveys assessing subjective well-being as well as happiness, one of the well-being components that reflect one’s feelings or moods. Happiness is mostly measured in adult samples. There is a lack of an overview of the tools used to evaluate adolescent happiness, so this paper aimed to review them. Methods: A literature search was performed in the PubMed and PsycArticles databases (2010–2019). In total, 133 papers met the eligibility criteria for this systematic review. Results: The results are grouped according to the type of measure, single or multiple items, that was used in a study. Almost half of the studies (64 of 133) evaluated subjective happiness using single-item measures. The most commonly used scales were the 4-item Subjective Happiness Scale and the Oxford Happiness Questionnaire. Among the 133 articles analyzed, 18 reported some validation procedures related to happiness. However, in the majority of cases (14 studies), happiness was not the central phenomenon of validation, which suggests a lack of happiness validation studies. Conclusions: Finally, recommendations for future research and for the choice of happiness assessment tools are presented.

The hospice as a learning space: a death education intervention with a group of adolescents

Background

The denial of death in Western society deprives young people of the tools to derive meaning from experiences of death and dying. Literature shows that death education may allow them to become familiar with this topic without causing negative effects. This article describes the effects of a death education course with adolescents, wherein participants were given the opportunity to meet palliative doctors and palliative psychologists at school and in a hospice, where they were able to converse with the families of the dying.

Methods

This study used mixed methods and included an evaluation of a death education intervention with longitudinal follow-up of outcomes. The course involved 87 secondary school students (experimental group) aged between 16 and 20 years. We also recruited a control group of 76 similarly-aged students to observe differences. The variables we examined were: alexithymia, representation of death, value attributed to life and spirituality. These were measured with the following instruments: the Toronto Alexithymia Scale-20, the Testoni Death Representation Scale, the Personal Meaning Profile and the Spiritual Orientation Inventory, respectively. To better understand how the students perceived the experience, we asked the experimental group to answer some open-ended questions. Their answers were analysed through thematic analysis.

Results

The study showed that death education and the hospice experience did not produce negative effects, but rather allowed students to decrease alexithymia, improving their ability to recognise and express emotions. Thematic analysis revealed that all participants perceived the experience as very positive.

Conclusions

Our findings affirm that death education programs can be successfully implemented in high schools, and that they can usefully involve local hospices and palliative care professionals, especially physicians and psychologists.

Supplementary Information

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12904-021-00747-w.

The relationship between spiritual well-being and happiness among healthcare students: Application of the spiritual health questionnaire for the Iranian population

Objectives

To investigate the relationship between spiritual well-being (SWB) and happiness in a sample of Iranian healthcare students, considering a culturally-adapted and a context-based measure of SWB.

Methods

In this descriptive-correlational study, 343 Muslim students of Qom University of Medical Science are studied from October 2017 to March 2018. Data collection tools were the culturally-adapted spiritual well-being scale (SWBS), the spiritual health questionnaire for the Iranian population (SHQ), and the Persian version of Oxford happiness inventory (OHI).

Results

Total scores of SWBS, SHQ, and OHI were in moderate (68.42 ± 12.76), high (193.74 ± 24.26), and moderate (37.95 ± 14.56) levels, respectively. Happiness had a significant positive correlation with all domains of SWBS and SHQ. Moreover, a significant proportion of happiness was determined by SWBS and SHQ. Also, some domains of SWBS and SHQ showed a significant correlation with age, gender, marital status, and academic major.

Conclusion

There was a significant correlation between happiness and SWB, measured by SWBS and SHQ. Hence, it seems that both SWBS and SHQ are sufficiently sensitive to assess the relationship between happiness and SWB.

Religious service attendance, health behaviors and well-being-an outcome-wide longitudinal analysis

BACKGROUND

Previous studies of relationship between religiosity, health behaviors and well-being have showed mainly positive relationships, however, are very often limited to results of associative nature and subject to unmeasured confounding. This study focused on evaluating evidence for a positive association between religious service attendance (RSA), health behaviors and well-being in a longitudinal setting and robustness of these associations to unmeasured confounding.

METHODS

Three waves (2009, 2011 and 2015) of the biennial longitudinal Polish household panel study with response from 6400 respondents were analyzed. Evidence for a positive and robust association between RSA and outcome variables was evaluated using outcome-wide regression analysis with control of all variables temporally prior to the exposure and sensitivity measures (E-values) to give information on the extent to which an unmeasured confounder would need to be associated with both the exposure and the outcomes.

RESULTS

RSA is associated with reduced risk of unhealthy behaviors (smoking, alcohol use) and higher emotional well-being. These relationships are robust to substantial unmeasured confounding and difficult to explain by reference to other, unknown, variables. Evidence for a positive relationship between RSA and other well-being variables (social, physical) was less clear.

CONCLUSIONS

Religiosity may play an important role in public health, particularly in prevention of non-communicable diseases. The strong and robust associations between RSA and some health behaviors (i.e. tobacco use, alcohol abuse) and emotional well-being should arguably be taken into account in health education, health promotion programs, health prevention policy and psychotherapeutic approaches, particularly in more religious populations.

Can I Sustain My Happiness? A Review, Critique and Research Agenda for Economics of Happiness

Human beings want to live in a state of happiness and prosperity, but happiness is important not just for the well-being of individuals but for the well-being of society. To ensure the maximization of happiness, it is necessary to consider more than just money, and rather include the right understanding of happiness at the individual level, the family level, the society level, and the environmental (nature) level. This paper contributes to the existing body of knowledge by consolidating the findings of the literature; grouping those into major themes and sub-themes; describing the mechanisms based on the empirical papers by highlighting the independent, dependent, control, and moderating variables, to study the causal relationships between variables under study; proposing an agenda for future research; and informing the policymakers about decisions influencing the human happiness level through legislative rules and regulations. Our results suggest prioritizing the conceptualization of happiness while computing the happiness level at the individual or collective levels. Furthermore, the study recommends governments to establish the conditions enabling individuals to report happiness independently from the political pressure to answer strategically for impressive happiness level figures at the macro level.