Abstract
Religious and spiritual (R/S) issues impact medical decision-making, particularly among highly R/S populations, for whom existing measures have limitations in identifying levels of R/S commitment. The Belief into Action (BIAc) scale was designed for this purpose and was never tested among hospitalized patients. We interviewed 152 patients (51% men) with a mean age of 48.9 years (SD = 15.2), having either cancer (27%), cardiovascular (26%), rheumatic (21%), or other diseases (26%). Cronbach alpha was .82 and a 3-factor structure (subjective, social, and private religious commitment) was the most robust. Results suggest the BIAc has adequate convergent, divergent, and incremental validity compared to other well-established questionnaires and is appropriate for the inpatient setting.
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Acknowledgments
We would like to thank all participants and the following individuals: Renata Myers, Leonardo Otuyama, Rosana Dumes, Maria Antonia Franco de Siqueira, and Ana Francisca Santos Pimentel, for aiding with translations and religious faith teachings; Altay Alves Lino de Souza and Nelson Canvas Junior, for their statistical advising; Prof. Harold Koenig (Duke University, US) and Dr. Lindsay Carey (La Trobe University, AU) with the reviewing of this submission.
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This study was financed in part by the Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior – Brasil (CAPES) – Finance Code 001.
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All procedures performed were in accordance with ethical standards and the 1964 Helsinki Declaration and its later amendments. The protocol was approved by the Ethics Research Committee of Universidade Federal de Sao Paulo (Nº 1.899.258) and registered in the Brazilian Registry of Clinical trials (RBR-358597). All patients signed an informed consent form.
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Castro, L.S., Balboni, T.A., Lobo, T.C. et al. Assessing Religious Commitment in a Multicultural Inpatient Setting: A Psychometric Evaluation of the 10-item Belief into Action Scale. J Relig Health 60, 3576–3590 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10943-021-01223-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10943-021-01223-8