Q. As we do this research on spiritual development in childhood and adolescence, what do you see as the major benefits and challenges of doing the research globally?
Peter C. Scales, Ph.D.
The biggest benefit is that we get to see whether spiritual development (SD) looks the same across cultural and religious diversity around the world. That doesn’t mean that it literally “looks” the same, in terms of practices, customs, or beliefs. We don’t need a new study to know that HOW people pursue and express their spirituality varies enormously within and across cultures, including the question of how much religion and spirituality are seen as one and the same, partially overlapping, or completely separate.
But are the underlying processes of spiritual development similar across this diversity? That is the more interesting question. We have hypothesized that SD is in large measure a function of three fundamental developmental processes and the relationship among those processes: Becoming aware of spiritual matters, Connecting to things beyond oneself that help provide meaning to life, and Owning a Way of Living in which one tries to live daily life in ways that honor the truths one has come to know as enduring. The contexts in which these processes might operate can vary, and the expression of the processes within specific contexts will vary, but we hypothesize that there could be quite a similarity across contexts and cultural settings in the nature of the processes themselves, that regardless of whether one is an Australian, Thai, or Ukrainian, regardless of whether one is not connected to a faith tradition, a Buddhist, Muslim, Jew, or Christian, these aspects of human development are universal. We might be wrong—very wrong in fact—but that is the exciting part about doing such research.Because we have this new theoretical framework of SD to explore, then regardless of the findings, we will help advance the understanding of SD.
The challenges to doing such a study, of course, are as numerous as the sources of diversity in our collective sample! Not the least challenging has been to even find a way to ask questions about spiritual development that are sensible and have common meaning to people in widely varying cultures. Because much of the discussion about things spiritual can veer very quickly into the deeply abstract, it’s also a challenge to phrase questions in such a way that one does not need a Ph.D. to answer them.
We also tried to keep translating costs to a minimum, but if you don’t translate at all in a global sample, you end up biasing the sample greatly toward more highly educated and affluent participants. So we allowed some translation to get a more diverse sample. But then we have the challenge of ensuring that the translations—of concepts that are tough to communicate across cultures anyway—were accurate in rendering the meaning intended in the original English.
It’s a challenge to write understandable questions that validly tap real dimensions of spiritual development and that have common meaning across cultures. Even the mechanics of survey administration are challenging. We chose to do a web-based survey for a variety of reasons, including the prohibitive cost of shipping paper surveys back and forth worldwide, the ease of scoring online surveys, the better ability to monitor the survey process to ensure quality control, etc. But many countries or contexts do not have the computer infrastructure to support online surveys, so paper surveys also were needed. Now we have people around the world completing the survey who not only might have different ways of understanding the basic words of the questions, like what God, or spiritual, or purpose means, but also might have used a different method of taking the survey, which alone could introduce differences in responses.
This is just a brief sampling of the issues we’re dealing with, but it’s enough to show that it’s a real challenge to watch all this closely enough to know what part of the variation in answers in such a complex study is due to built-in variations or problems with the methodology, and what part is due to real underlying differences in spiritual development. Stay tuned!
Peter L. Benson, Ph.D.
We are very interested in the hypothesis that spiritual development is a universal stream of development. If we are right, there ought to be common dynamics of spiritual development that cut across cultures and societies. And there also ought to be significant variations in the process based on societal traditions, languages and history. And so, it is critical that we engage young people from many nations in our research. While we do this, we also know that certain terms like “spiritual” and “spirituality” do not translate easily into some languages. This is one of the many challenges of taking on a global project.
Pamela Ebstyne King, Ph.D.
No doubt, conducting research globally is vital for understanding spiritual development in childhood and adolescence. First off, a major hypothesis that has guided the work of the CSD has been that spiritual development is a universal experience. In order to test this hypothesis we must explore this question far and wide. This will enable us to begin to identify common aspects of spiritual development across cultures. In addition, exploring the topic globally will allow us to begin to identify idiosyncratic aspects of spiritual development. Of course, this is much easier said than done.
The challenges are many. I will highlight two. First off, getting a general handle on what we mean by spiritual development has been a challenge. Spiritual development is a very complex concept and has many existing definitions within the field of psychology. Although there are some dominating themes, there are many theoretical and atheoretical definitions that make a precise study of the construct a challenge. Consequently, it is difficult to operationalize in one culture, let alone many cultures.
Secondly, spirituality is closely related to religion, philosophy, and other existential domains. Thus, it is closely related to worldviews and ideology. Given that worldviews are fundamentally different and even opposing at times, conceptualizing and operationalizing spirituality across cultures is very challenging.
Despite the challenges, the benefits are many. To name a few—such research may further an understanding of commonalities among young people worldwide and increase understanding cross-culturally. Given that there is substantial evidence in the U.S. that spirituality is associated with positive development, furthering our understanding of spiritual development may shed light on pathways to promote positive development in young people around the world. In addition, the challenges spur us onto pursue creative and interdisciplinary methodologies. Already we are pursuing this work through focus groups, in-depth study of youth spiritual exemplars, and survey data.
