Typologies of Religiousness/Spirituality: Implications for Health and Well-Being

Background and Purpose: Religious/spiritual beliefs and practices have received considerable attention in social work practice and research because they are associated with indicators of health and well-being. Religiousness/spirituality is a multi-dimensional concept, and using variable-centered approaches may not fully capture diversities in religiousness/spirituality and their relationships to health and well-being. Using a person-centered approach, we examined patterns of religious/spiritual beliefs and practices, and the relation between such patterns and health and well-being. Specifically, this study aimed to address two questions, Are there different patterns of religiousness/spirituality?” and “Do individuals with different patterns of religiousness/spirituality differ in their health and well-being?”

Methods: The study used a nationally representative sample of adults (N = 1,431) who participated in the 1998 General Social Survey (Mage = 45.6, SD = 17.0) that included the Brief Multidimensional Measures of Religiousness/Spirituality. For this study, we used one-item measures of frequency of religious service attendance and of frequency of prayer, and two scales (Positive Coping and Daily Spiritual Experience). We derived typologies using latent profile analyses under the assumption that the unobserved heterogeneity of religious/spiritual characteristics is reflected in variability in the measures of religiousness/spirituality (Muthén & Muthén, 1998-2008). Then we used stepwise multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) and multivariate analysis of covariance (MANCOVA) to examine cluster differences in socio-demographic variables (age, sex, race, marital status, education, socioeconomic index[SEI]). Next we examined class differences in self-perceived health and three indicators of psychological well-being (happiness, satisfaction with financial situation, and psychological distress), controlling for socio-demographic variables.

Results: We identified a four-class model based on fit indices including BIC, entropy, Lo-Mendell-Rubin likelihood ratio test, and the bootstrapped likelihood ratio test. The highly religious (n = 324) scored highest on all measures of religiousness/spirituality. The moderately religious (n = 404) scored close to the highly religious group except for much lower service attendance. The somewhat religious (n = 475) scored slightly below the overall means. The minimally religious or nonreligious (n = 228) scored at least one SD below the overall means on all measures. The highly religious group was more likely to be older, female, Black, married, and have high SEI. The minimally religious group was likely to be younger, male, non-Black, not married, and have high SEI. The four classes were distinctively different in psychological well-being, in that the highly religious class was most likely to be happy and satisfied with finances and least likely to be psychologically distressed. Differences in perceived health were not distinct in the global test, but the moderately religious class had significantly lower perceived health than the highly religious class.

Conclusions and Implications: Using a person-centered approach, this study extended current efforts to understand the relationship between religiousness/spirituality and health and well-being. This study provides social workers with information about how individuals of different socio-demographic characteristics have specific religious/spiritual profiles and how those different profiles may influence health and well-being. Better understanding of clients' religiousness/spirituality profiles can help social workers deliver both faith-based and non-faith-based social services and implement culturally sensitive practices.