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Defining and Measuring Spirituality in South African Specialist Psychiatry

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Abstract

To define the meaning of “spirituality” in a South African phenomenological, theory-generating qualitative inquiry, theory construction methodology was used. This refers to the tradition of nursing theory development, where a central core concept identified from the integrated data—in this case, interviews and the literature content—had to be defined. A major focus of the study was to distinguish spirituality from religion. The denotative and connotative meanings of “spirituality” were explored to establish the components for a definition. The attributes of this definition included that spirituality constitutes a “quality”, a “journey”, a “relationship” as well as a “capacity”. While these items derived from this local definition of spirituality can be proposed for inclusion in a questionnaire for measuring spirituality in a South African context, the limits of the scope of the explorative qualitative inquiry from which it was derived must be considered.

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Acknowledgments

This research was supported by the Faculty of Health Sciences of the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, by awarding two individual Grants during 2009 and 2010 to the first author.

Conflict of interest

The authors declared no conflict of interest in respect to the authorship and/or publication of this article.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychiatry, University of the Witwatersrand, P.O. Box 1247, Pinegowrie, Johannesburg, 2123, South Africa

    A. B. R. Janse van Rensburg & C. P. Szabo

  2. Department of Nursing, University of Johannesburg, Johannesburg, South Africa

    M. Poggenpoel

  3. Department of Educational Psychology, University of Johannesburg, Johannesburg, South Africa

    C. P. H. Myburgh

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  1. A. B. R. Janse van Rensburg
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  2. M. Poggenpoel
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  3. C. P. H. Myburgh
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  4. C. P. Szabo
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Correspondence to A. B. R. Janse van Rensburg.

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Janse van Rensburg, A.B.R., Poggenpoel, M., Myburgh, C.P.H. et al. Defining and Measuring Spirituality in South African Specialist Psychiatry. J Relig Health 54, 1839–1855 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10943-014-9943-y

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