Spirituality and religion in cancer.

Measurement of religion, religiousness, and spirituality for the purposes of health research has been an evolving enterprise. Beginning with Durkheim’s Suicide (1897/1951), and continuing through the 1960s and 1970s, epidemiological studies focused on mortality or health differences among religious affiliations. A second wave of studies beginning in 1979 [1] took an entirely different approach. Religiousness was measured with a single item asking about attendance at services or membership in a congregation; the individual’s specific religious affiliation, the basis for all the previous research, was now usually absent [2]. Also, Annals of Oncology letters to the editor