Abstract: The purpose of this study was to determine the degree of spirituality among 430 predominately African American undergraduate students who completed the 48-item Life Attitude Profile-Revised (LAP-R). T-tests revealed that these students had a higher spirituality score than their predominately White counterparts who recently completed the LAP-R. Unlike the White students, no significant gender differences were found among specific spiritual indices. If these students use their moderately high degree of spirituality to influence health-related behaviors, the high rates of morbidity and mortality common among African American adults may lessen.
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Spirituality is consistently defined as a (personal) sense of purpose and meaning (Abels, 2000; Bensley, 1998; Martin & Martin, 2002; McBride, Borrks, & Pilkington, 1998). Many people, including health educators, however, continue to equate spirituality with religion. Words such as spirituality and religion are used synonymously. Spilka and McIntosh (1996) reported that while people who value religion also claim to value spirituality, the terms are different. These authors differentiated spirituality from religion by explaining that spirituality involves fully living a meaningful, purposeful life while religion entails engaging in traditional practices, ceremonies, and dogma in religious institutions. About 46% of Americans attend church (religion), but 58% of Americans say that they frequently think about meaning and purpose of life (spirituality, Inglehart, 2004), which implies that many Americans may be more spiritual than religious. According to Martin and Martin, however, spirituality supersedes and overarches religiosity for most African Americans. Indices of spirituality include having direction, goals, hope, and eagerness for living (Reker, 1999), all of which are not necessary for practicing religion.
Currently, research studies show that people with higher levels of purpose and meaning tend to be healthier in general (Holt, Clark, Kreuter, & Rubio, 2003; Konig, 2002). Specifically, researchers have shown that spiritual well-being positively influences depression (Nelson, Rosenfeld, Breitbart, & Galietta, 2002) as well as recovery from addiction (Doweiko, 2002), breast cancer (Feher & Maly, 1999), and cardiovascular disease (Contrada, 2003). These findings may be specifically important information for males, who typically score lower on spirituality assessments than females (Dennis, Muller, Miller, & Banerjee, 2004; Knox, Langehough, Waiters, and Rowley, 1998; Reker, 1999). These findings also may provide important information for African Americans, especially African American males who have disproportionately high morbidity and mortality rates (Newlin, Knafl, & Melkus, 2002).
Peter Benson (2003), President of Search Institute Minneapolis, a national non-profit research organization dedicated to promoting the well-being of children and adolescents, reported that spirituality is positively related to school success and negatively related to alcohol and tobacco use as well as violence and teen pregnancy. Holder, DuRant, Harris, Daniel, Obeidallah, and Goodman (2000) added that spiritual well-being influences less sexual activity among African American teens. Yet, in their article, "The Role of Spirituality in Preventing Early Sexual Behavior," Doswell, Kouyate, and Taylor (2003) reported that many African Americans yearn daily for life meaning and need to integrate what spirituality they have into fostering more self-control over life decisions, particularly regarding their typically early sexual behavior.
A diminished sense of spirituality may be related to other negative behaviors among adolescents. For example, Knox, et al. (1998) found that college students who have a lower degree of spirituality also engage more in stealing, getting into trouble with police, damaging property as well as being less able to "survive on their own." In an unpublished report, Dennis and Muller (2004) found fewer indices of spirituality among obese college students who likely engaged in unhealthy behaviors of overeating and exercising too little.
In addition to having a personal spirituality that affects individual behaviors, having spiritual peers also may affect personal behaviors. For example, Jagers (1997) found that African American youth who rated their friends as spiritual tended themselves to be empathic and less antagonistic toward others.
Jagers and Smith (1996) reported that overall African American college students have higher levels of spirituality than white students. Moreover, according to Chatters, Taylor, and Lincoln (1999) and Benson (2003), African American students also engage in spiritual practices (e.g., praying, meditating, reflecting on life, fully living life) more than whites. In a data set of 127,000 6th -12th grade adolescents across 320 U.S. cities, Benson found that although 70% of white students reported engaging in spiritual practices, 83% of African American students engaged in these behaviors. Belief in God is not necessary to be spiritual (Spilka, Hood, Hunsberger, & Gorsuch, 2003); however, in a study by Walker and Dixon (2002), it was found that 93% of white students reported believing in God and 99% of African American students reported belief in God.
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