The Spiritual Well-Being Scale (SWBS) as an Indicator of General Well-Being

*Rodger K. Bufford, Jessica Cantley, Jaycee Hallford, Yadira Vega and Jessica Wilbur*

### **Abstract**

Developed in the context of the subjective well-being movement in the 1970s, the Spiritual Well -Being Scale (SWBS) has stood the test of time. It was conceived within a theistic tradition and embodied the sense of well-being suggested in Biblical texts. The Old Testament greeting and blessing, shalom, seems to convey well the underlying concept of well-being. In this chapter we explore the empirical support and practical significance of the SWBS as a measure of well-being using the notion of biopsychosocial health as proposed by Engel and adapted by Sulmasy to include a religious/spiritual (R/S) dimension as well. Since the 1980s, thousands of studies have been completed and over 20 translations of the scale have been carried out. This chapter will concentrate on research since publication of Paloutzian, et al. Mr. Rogers used to sing, "Everything grows together because we're all one piece." Here our thesis is that everything goes together—biopsychosocial and spiritual—because humans function holistically. The SWBS captures this reality well. As a result, the SWBS functions as an index of well-being, an assessment instrument to identify those whose functioning is impaired, and an index of outcomes for interventions that seek to foster well-being.

**Keywords:** happiness, spiritual well-being, biopsychosocial, religious/spiritual, health

### **1. Introduction**

"Happiness is different things to different people" [1]. Happiness, joy, and subjective well-being are related but distinct concepts. Myers and Diener [2] explored happiness and showed that it is related to "three correlated but distinct factors: the relative presence of positive affect, absence of negative affect, and satisfaction with life" (p. 11). They referred to these together as subjective well-being. Myers and Diener concluded that, among other things, happy people have a meaningful religious faith. In this chapter we examine the link to religious faith or spiritual well-being as shown by research with the Spiritual Well-Being Scale (SWBS).

The SWBS is one of the most widely used measures of well-being. A recent search identified over 125,000 citations in peer-reviewed journals in the past decade. Developed by Paloutzian and Ellison [3–5], three factors contributed to the conceptual background of the SWBS: the social indicators movement of the 1960s and 1970s, the subjective quality of life studies of the 1970s, and the qualitative study of spiritual well-being by Moberg [6]. Moberg theorized that spiritual well-being involved a vertical dimension of relationship to God, and a horizontal dimension of relationship to fellow humans and the material world [6].

The SWBS consists of 20 items. Ten items include explicit references to God and comprise the Religious Well-Being Scale (RWB). The remaining 10 items measure relationship to fellow humans and the material world and comprise the Existential Well-Being Scale (EWB). The SWBS combines RWB and EWB, which are related but distinct measures. Each item is rated on a six-point continuum from *Strongly Agree* to *Strongly Disagree* with no middle point. About half of the items are worded in reversed form and reverse scored to minimize the role of yay-saying or nay-saying response biases on scores for the scale [3].
