Abstract
The purpose of this study was to develop a five-item form of the Religious and Spiritual Struggles Scale (RSS; Exline et al., Psychology of Religion and Spirituality, 6, 208-222, 2014), (2022). Drawing upon three samples – 711 depressed adults from prior studies that utilized the RSS (Study 1), 303 undergraduates from a public university in the Southeastern U.S. (Study 2), and 121 adults seeking psychotherapy and/or primary care in an integrated behavioral health clinic (Study 3) – findings indicated the five-item version represents a structurally sound and reliable instrument for assessing clinically relevant struggles (divine, interpersonal, moral, doubt, ultimate meaning struggles) in mental health care settings. Specifically, Cronbach’s alphas for the RSS-5 ranged from .77 to .85 across the three studies. Further, scores on this short form overlapped highly with the original RSS in Study 1 and were moderately to strongly associated with validated assessments of positive (well-being, flourishing, and perceived meaning in life) and negative (suicide ideation, depression and anxiety symptoms) mental health in Study 2 and 3. When accounting for depression and anxiety symptoms, RSS-5 scores were also uniquely associated with patients’ suicidal ideation over the past month in Study 3. Although we found evidence of multidimensionality of the selected items that aligned with psychometric findings for the original RSS (Exline et al., Psychology of Religion and Spirituality, 6, 208-222, 2014), findings also supported a unidimensional factor structure for the RSS-5 in each sample. Looking ahead, the RSS-5 will hopefully support clinical research and practice in ways that enhance training clinicians’ responsiveness to patients who are experiencing spiritual struggles.