Spiritual Healing from Trauma: New Scale Development, Analysis and Validation

Background and Purpose: Spiritual healing from trauma is an essential area for practitioners in clinical and non-clinical settings to assess adults who have experienced trauma. Relevant psychometric instruments that address healing and trauma in the context of spirituality include the Organizational Healing Scale, the Post-Traumatic Growth Inventory, the Clinician-Administered PTSD Scale for DSM–5, the Multidimensional Trauma Recovery and Resiliency Scale, the Clinician-Administered PTSD Scale, and the Trauma Healing Scale. However, no scale has yet operationalized the spiritual healing from trauma as an independent construct to measure the level of healing within the context of spiritual practices. To address this psychometric gap, following a content analysis of the literature, this study analyzed existing scales and studies on spiritual healing and further developed a new scale to capture the construct of spiritual healing from trauma. The question this study focused on was: How do spiritual practices affect changes in the healing process among people who experienced trauma? The purpose of this oral presentation is to describe the development of the new scale to measure the level of healing and its validation in a sample of adults who experienced trauma at least one year ago.

Methods: A content analysis was used to explore the role of spiritual healing in the process of recovering from trauma. Besides empirical studies, other allied evidence and gray literature including book chapters, therapeutic case studies, and narratives on spiritual healing from trauma were examined. The purpose was to generate scale items ensuring their empirical foundation. Subsequently, Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) were consulted to establish face and content validity. Next, a pilot study was conducted to fine tune the wording of the items and thereby test the psychometric properties of the proposed scale. Using Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA), the scale was evaluated and validated with statistical tests to determine the factor structure and psychometric properties. Reliability was investigated using Classical Test Theory to determine the internal consistency of the scale.

Results: A preliminary content analysis revealed that hope, mind, body, spirit, and meaning-making collectively embody spiritual healing from trauma. In this context, an item pool of 50 items was created under five subscales namely hope, mind, body, spirit and meaning-making. EFA was conducted to ensure the construct validity of the scale. Principal Component Analysis was used to determine the empirical quality of the factor structure. Further, the validity of the scale was established through extraction and rotation.

Conclusion and Implications: After being validated, the scale can be administered by helping practitioners in diverse settings to evaluate the degree of spiritual healing in clients dealing with trauma. The study recommends integrating evidence-informed spiritual healing to address trauma-based issues. Helping professionals, especially social workers, need extra guidance, and progressive practices to be able to cater to clients’ spiritual needs. Further, implications for trauma-based clinical practice and research to streamline the process of spiritual healing among traumatized clients will be shared. Future studies should be designed to promote spiritual healing strategies and enhance spiritual competencies in diverse trauma practice settings.