Authors:
Pamela E.King, Yeonsoo Yoo, Jennifer Medina Vaughn, jonathan M.Tirrell, G. John Geldhof, and Elizabeth Dowling
Abstract:
The Measurement of Diverse Adolescent Spirituality (MDAS) was developed to assess adolescent spirituality and religiosity for use with diverse youth. Researchers have emphasized the multifaceted nature of spirituality and suggested the need for robust measures to chart patterns of spiritual development in a culturally and developmentally valid manner. The MDAS was developed as a theory-based measure, grounded in a relational developmental systems metatheory (RDS), that views spiritual development as resulting from the coactions between an individual and the diverse systems in which he or she lives, especially as they pertain to the individual’s perceptions and responses to transcendence. The original MDAS was a 27-item self-report multidimensional measure of adolescent spirituality including three subscales of transcendence, fidelity, and contribution. This chapter reviews the ongoing process of developing the MDAS and applicability across two samples in Central America. Initial measurement construction was tested on an adolescent sample in Mexico using the three subscales. Two of the subscales, Transcendence and Fidelity, were later used in a broader study, the Compassion International Study of Positive Youth Development, a study of thriving and spirituality in El Salvador. In a later study, measurement invariance testing was explored between the Mexican and Salvadoran samples. The chapter discusses the findings from these studies, the psychometric properties of a refined short version of the MDAS using the two subscales within two samples from Mexico and El Salvador, the usefulness of the measure more broadly, and directions for future research.
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Spirituality
Religion as Fertile Ground
Abstract An extensive body of research points toward spirituality and religiousness as resources for promoting human thriving. People with strong connections to the transcendent and religious meaning in life often view morals and values as central to their self-concepts. Although moral identity theory and contemporary views of virtue development emphasize the importance of narrative identity for habituated moral action, the two are often discussed in isolation of each other. In this chapter, the authors highlight how their commonality is particularly evident when examining the potential of religion to provide a transcendent self-narrative that leads to virtue formation and moral action…
Youth
Interrogating Ergodicity & Specificity in Youth Development Programs
The CI research team look at instances of commonality and specificity in Salvadoran youth enrolled in CI programs.
Gratitude
How diverse beliefs shape the experience of transcendent gratitude
Author: Jeane Nelson, Susan Mangan, Rebecca Ann Baer, Jeff V. Ramdass, Pamela Ebstyne King Abstract: As a novel contribution, this study considers transcendent gratitude (e.g. gratitude towards non-human benefactors such as God, Science, or Karma) across diverse belief systems. The sample included 619 participants (M age 37.5, 52.6% female) across the U.S. with beliefs across three distinct categories: a) Theistic; 38.4%), b) Spiritual but not theistic; 26.4%, and c) Non-theistic/Non-spiritual (Other); 35.2%. Across the three belief systems, we tested the associations between gratitude and theistic predictors (e.g. feeling comfort or anger towards God, fidelity, interaction with God, attachment to…