The Benefits of Belief: the Place of Spirituality and Religiosity in the CD-RISC

Abstract

The belief-as-benefit hypothesis holds that spirituality and religiosity strengthen resilience and increase personal well-being. This spiritually-based account of resilience informed the development of the Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale (CD-RISC), which includes a spiritual influences factor. In keeping with this general account it was hypothesized that measures of spirituality and religiosity will be positively correlated with scores on the 23 secular items of the CD-RISC (i.e., the 25 item CD-RISC minus the 2 items that define the spiritual influences factor). Participants (n = 338) were administered the CD-RISC, the spirituality subscale of the 16-Strength Questionnaire and the Intrinsic/Extrinsic-Revised scale. Scores on the 23-item CD-RISC showed a significant positive correlation with spirituality scores (r = .224, p < .001) but not intrinsic religiosity (r = .093, p = .09) or extrinsic religiosity (r = .036, p = .51). The positive correlation between scores on the 23-item CD-RISC and spirituality held after controlling for age, gender and income in multiple regression (sr = .220, p < .001). While the results provide partial support for the belief-as-benefit hypothesis it was argued that they do not justify Connor and Davidson’s decision to integrate spirituality and religiosity items into their measure of resilience.