Spirituality, Religiosity, and Thriving among Adolescents: Identification and Confirmation of Factor Structures

Adolescent spirituality and thriving 1 Using a data set from Search Institute’s research archive, Young Adolescents and Their Parents (YAP), the present study ascertained whether religiosity, spirituality, and thriving could be identified and confirmed as separate latent constructs among a randomly selected subsample of 1,000 youth drawn from the larger YAP sample. Factor analytic and structural equation modeling (SEM) findings provided evidence of the separate, multidimensional presence of the latent constructs (second order factors) and confirmed the presence of four religiosity first order factors (e.g., role of a faith institution in one’s life), three spirituality first order factors (e.g., orientation to help people other than the self), and nine thriving first order factors (e.g., future orientation/path to a hopeful future). Limitations of the present analyses and directions for future research with this, and related data sets, are discussed. Adolescent spirituality and thriving 2 In these early years of the twenty-first century a new vocabulary for discussing America’s young people has emerged. Propelled by the increasingly more collaborative contributions of scholars (e.g., Lerner, Brentano, Dowling, & Anderson, 2002; Lerner, Dowling, & Anderson, in press; Roth, Brooks-Gunn, Murray, & Foster, 1998), practitioners (e.g., Wheeler, 2000), and policy makers (e.g., Gore & Gore, 2002; Gore, 2003), youth are viewed as resources to be developed. Based on a developmental systems theoretical perspective (Lerner, 2002) that focuses on the potential for healthy development that arises because of the relative malleability (“plasticity”) of the relations between people and their families and communities, the new vocabulary emphasizes the strengths present within all young people and involves concepts such as developmental assets (Benson, 2003), positive youth development (e.g., Little, 1993), moral development (Damon, 1990), civic engagement (e.g., Flanagan & Sherrod, 1998; Sherrod, Flanagan, & Youniss, 2002; Youniss, McClellan, & Yates, 1999), well-being (Bornstein, et al., 2003), and thriving (Scales, Benson, Leffert, & Blyth, 2000). Because of the openness of the developmental system to change concepts associated with the new vocabulary about youth reflect the ideas that every young person has the potential for successful, healthy development, that all youth possess the capacity for positive development, and that such flourishing of youth development will occur when the adolescent is engaged with his or her proximal community context (e.g., his or her neighborhood) in mutually beneficial manners. A young person may be said to be thriving, then, if he or she is involved across time in healthy, positive relations with his or her community, and on the path to what Csikszentmihalyi and Rathunde (1998) describe as “idealized personhood” (an adult status marked by making culturally valued contributions to self, others, and institutions). Adolescent spirituality and thriving 3 Thus, a young person’s emerging sense of self--his or her identity development— should, in ideal circumstances, involve a commitment to use his or her strengths to find a way to “do right by” (to be civically engaged in positive ways with) the community (and thereby support the context that is supporting him or her). In essence, then, contemporary developmental theory leads to the idea that healthy adolescent development involves a merger of moral and civic identity and results in engagement by the adolescent with the institutions of civil society (Lerner, et al., 2002; in press). According to Scales, et al. (2000), thriving youth exhibit not only the absence of negative behaviors but also indicators of positive development. Specifically, Scales, et al. (2000) operationalize thriving as involving seven attributes, i.e., school success, leadership, helping others, maintenance of physical health, delay of gratification, valuing diversity, and, overcoming adversity. Adolescents thrive when their moral and civic identities involve them in valuing and taking actions that contribute to a world beyond themselves in place and time. Such a commitment reflects a young person’s sense of transcendence of self or, in other words, his or her sense of spirituality (Lerner, et al., 2002, in press). Accordingly, if fueled by a sense of spirituality as it relates to a commitment to contribute civically and thereby transcend self, it is believed that young people will manifest integrated moral and civic identities and the characteristics indicative of positive youth development, that is, the “Five Cs” of positive youth development: Competence, confidence, character, social connection, and caring or compassion (Eccles & Gootman, 2002; Lerner, Fisher, & Weinberg, 2000; Roth, et al., 1998). The development of such functionally valued behaviors in young people, as well as the development of an understanding of, and a commitment to, entities that transcend self and self-interest are believed to result in the emergence in youth of an orientation to contribute to their Adolescent spirituality and thriving 4 community (which is a “sixth C” of positive youth development; Little, 1993; Youniss, et al., 1999). Consistent with Youniss, et al. (1999), we believe that the sense of transcendence of self and a rejection of zero-sum-game self-interest, that accrues as integrated moral and civic self-definitions (identities) develop, may be interpreted as a growing spiritual sense (Benson, 2003). As explained in Lerner, et al. (2002), akin to fidelity in Erikson’s (1968) conception of identity development, spirituality is a transcendent virtue that accompanies the behaviors (roles) associated with a self-definition that regards contributions to society as both morally required and civically necessary. Reich (1999), for instance, operationalizes spirituality in a manner consistent with this view; he specifies that spirituality is viewing life in new and better ways, adopting some conception as transcendent or of great value, and defining one’s self and one’s relation to others in a manner that goes beyond provincialism or materialism to express authentic concerns about others. In turn, Reich (1999) contrasts this conception of spirituality with his operationalization of religiosity, which to him involves a relationship with a particular institutionalized doctrine about a supernatural power, a relationship that occurs through affiliation with an organized faith and participation in its prescribed rituals. That is, to Reich (1999) and others (e.g., Youniss, et al., 1999), a young person’s sense of religiosity may be an important source of positive development; however, religiosity may or may not be dependent on a young person experiencing a sense of transcendence or spirituality when involved in the formal rites and institutions of an established faith tradition. In fact, according to Benson (1997), religion and spirituality may be regarded as potentially orthogonal and important sources of thriving among youth. Adolescent spirituality and thriving 5 Thus, Reich’s (1999) operational distinction between these two potential non-isomorphic covariates of positive youth development is potentially empirically important. In short, then, contemporary scholars of adolescent development are pointing to the implications of religiosity, spirituality, and thriving on positive youth development (see, for example, Lerner, et al. in press; Youniss, et al., 1999), and are conceptually differentiating the role of these constructs in such development. However, there have been no attempts to date to operationalize and obtain psychometric support for these constructs within one data set pertinent to adolescence. Thus, despite the presence of influential operationalizations of religiosity (Reich, 1999), spirituality (Reich, 1999), and thriving (Scales, et al., 2000) within the current adolescent literature, and the theoretical burden placed on these constructs as distinct variables in the development of youth (e.g., Youniss, et al., 1999), and before any hypotheses can be addressed about the links among religiosity, spirituality, and thriving within adolescence (e.g., as in Lerner, et al., in press), there must be psychometric evidence that operationalizations of these three constructs converge with adolescent data to support the view that the constructs are empirically distinct. For instance, the availability of psychometrically sound measures can test whether there is evidence that the operationalizations of religiosity (Reich, 1999), spirituality (Reich, 1999), and thriving (Scales, et al., 2000) noted above correspond to three distinct sets of measurable patterns of covariation. The purpose of the present study was to address this question by exploiting one of the few data sets with an item pool potentially appropriate for such psychometric analyses. Search Institute has several large data sets in its research archives that contain information pertinent to the constructs of religiosity, spirituality, and thriving during the adolescent period. We report initial analyses of the Young Adolescents and Their Parents (YAP) data Adolescent spirituality and thriving 6 set (Search Institute, 1984). The YAP involves the responses of a cross-sectional sample that includes 8,165 youth, ranging in grade from fifth through ninth grades, and 10,467 parents. The present study focuses only on the youth data. Of the 319 items in the youth survey, the participants responded to 91 questionnaire items that pertained to religiosity, spirituality, and positive youth development or thriving (e.g., social competence, selfesteem and respect for diversity). Through use of the data analytic strategies described below, we present heretofore uncharted data that allow a determination to be made about whether evidence exists for the presence of separate factors for religiosity, spirituality, and thriving among the adolescents in the YAP sample and, if so, to describe the structure of each of these factors within the data set.