Religions 2016, 7(5), 45; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel7050045
Selecting the Best Version of SHALOM to Assess Spiritual Well-Being
1
Faculty of Education & Arts, Federation University Australia, Ballarat, Victoria 3350, Australia
2
Department of Rural Health, Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry & Health Sciences, University of Melbourne, Victoria 3010, Australia
Academic Editor: Arndt Büssing
Received: 1 March 2016 / Revised: 26 April 2016 / Accepted: 27 April 2016 / Published: 30 April 2016
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Measures of Spirituality/Religiosity—Description of Concepts and Validation of Instruments)
Abstract
This paper extends the reporting of contemporary use of the Spiritual Health and Life-Orientation Measure (SHALOM), which provides flexibility to researchers, enabling them to choose the version of the instrument that best suits the cohort under investigation. SHALOM was built on a solid theoretical foundation, provided by the Four Domains Model of Spiritual Health/Well-Being. It comprises 20 items that assess spiritual well-being, as reflected in the quality of relationships that each person has with themselves, others, the environment, and/or with God. Summary results are reported from 30 recent studies. SHALOM provides a unique form of assessment that is statistically stronger than just assessing lived experiences, in that spiritual harmony/dissonance is studied by comparing each person’s “lived experiences” with her/his “ideals” for spiritual well-being. SHALOM has been sought for use with hundreds of studies in 29 languages, in education, healthcare and wider community. A generic form of SHALOM was developed to expand the Transcendental domain to include more than God. However, recent studies have shown that relating with God is most important for spiritual well-being. The best version of SHALOM to assess spiritual well-being depends on the needs of the clients/participants and the project goals of the researcher. This will involve a selection between the original form of Spiritual Well-Being Questionnaire-SHALOM for comparison with other measures and investigation of characteristics influencing spiritual well-being; or the dissonance method for spiritual care; and either the original or the generic version of SHALOM for use with non-religious/secular participants. View Full-TextKeywords:
spiritual well-being; assess; SHALOM; God
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited (CC BY 4.0).

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Fisher, J. Selecting the Best Version of SHALOM to Assess Spiritual Well-Being. Religions 2016, 7, 45.
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