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The dissertation of Kelley, IHM, MS_________________ entitled ...

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Grief in Women Religious 24<br />

as .79 (p < .001; Costa & McCrae, 1992). In the present study, a coefficient alpha <strong>of</strong> .91<br />

was found for the NEO-E.<br />

Spirituality. Spirituality was measured using the Spiritual Well-Being Scale<br />

(SWB; Paloutzian & Ellison, 1982). <strong>The</strong> SWB scale gives a global assessment <strong>of</strong> the<br />

subjective spiritual quality <strong>of</strong> life (see Appendix E). Paloutzian and Ellison (1991) state<br />

that the term "spiritual well-being" reflects people's meaning <strong>of</strong> spirituality as "either<br />

their relationship with God or what they understand to be their spiritual being, or their<br />

sense <strong>of</strong> satisfaction with life or purpose in life" (p.2). <strong>The</strong> SWB total score presents a<br />

general measure <strong>of</strong> an individual's spiritual well-being. Additionally, the SWB contains<br />

two subscales. <strong>The</strong> Religious Well-Being score (RWB) provides an assessment <strong>of</strong> an<br />

individual's relationship with God and the individual's perceived satisfaction with God.<br />

<strong>The</strong> Existential Well-Being (EWB) score assesses an individual's satisfaction with and<br />

purpose in life (Paloutzian & Ellison, 1991).<br />

<strong>The</strong> SWB is a 20-item self-administered instrument Responses are given on a 6-<br />

point Likert scale ranging from "strongly agree" to "strongly disagree." RWB is assessed<br />

by the ten even-numbered statements that contain the word "God" and the ten remaining<br />

odd numbered items assess EWB (Paloutzian & Ellison, 1991). In an attempt to control<br />

for response bias, about half <strong>of</strong> the items are worded in a negative fashion. <strong>The</strong><br />

statements are scored from 1 to 6. For positive items, a higher number represents greater<br />

well-being, and the negatively worded items are reverse scored. <strong>The</strong> sum <strong>of</strong> all 20 items<br />

assesses overall spiritual well-being (Paloutzian & Ellison, 1991).<br />

Bufford, Paloutzian, and Ellison (1991) found high reliability for the SWB in four<br />

test-retest studies. <strong>The</strong> reliability coefficients ranged from .88 to .98 for RWB, .73 to .98

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