Spiritual Well Being In Appalachian Women: An Instrument Evaluation

Abstract

The purpose of this research was to investigate the efficacy of the Spiritual Well Being instrument constructed by Paloutzian and Ellison. A convenience sample of 50 rural Appalachian women agreed to complete the questionnaire. Guarantees of confidentiality were made by the investigator. Although the Cronbach alpha for the instrument was 9.11, the Likert scale may have been unsatisfactory as a response format. The conceptual clarity of the construct, spiritual well being, is unclear and requires further phenomenologic investigation to determine the indicators for the population of Appalachian women.