Psycho-spiritual factors of stress-related growth

Abstract

Psycho-religious factors of posttraumatic growth (PTG) had been widely studied, yet only a few studies had examined the psycho-spiritual factors with stress-related growth (SRG). In order to measure spirituality locally, Study One explored the validity of the Spiritual Transcendence Scale (STS) (Piedmont, 2004) in a 415 adult students sample. Results of the study supported the internal consistency reliability of the overall STS and its concurrent validity with the Religious subscale of the Social Axioms Scale (Leung, Lam, Bond, Conway, Gornick, Amponash et al., 2012) and the Faith Maturity Scale (short-form) (Hui, Ng, Mok, Lau, & Cheung, 2011). Contrary to our prediction, the three-factor structure of the original STS was not supported in Hong Kong population. In accord with previous studies on psycho-religious factors of PTG (for example, Stanton, Bower & Low, 2006), age, gender, personality and spirituality were hypothesized to predict SRG in context of academic stress in Study Two. A total of 182 adult student samples were recruited. Results of the study only supported that spirituality as well as extraverted and agreeable in personalities predicted SRG, but not the other measured variables. Besides, age was the only variable moderated the relationship between academic stress and SRG as hypothesized. Last but not least, consistent with previous studies by Kleim and Ehlers (2010) and our hypothesis, a curvilinear relationship between SRG and depressive symptom was supported. Findings of the present study shed light to clinicians about the conceptualization of SRG and direction for potential psychological treatment.