Conceptual definition and standardization of the spiritual values scale

Pages:411-414
Fauzia Nazam and Akbar Husain (Department of Psychology, Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh, Uttar Pradesh)

The present study is to give operational definition of spiritual values and standardization of Spiritual Values Scale (SVS). The objectives of the study are: (1) to determine the reliability of the scale, particularly internal consistency of the scale, (2) to determine the validity of the scale, particularly obtaining the factorial validity with the aim of finding factorial structure of Spiritual Values Scale, and (3) to determine the inter-factorial validity of the scale in order to ensure that all the factors are measuring the same hypothetical construct that is spiritual values. Four hundred Muslim adolescents were selected from main stream schools and Madaris of Aligarh City. Of these, there were 200 female and 200 male adolescents. The Mean age and SD of the participants were 15.88 (minimum 12 and maximum 19) and 1.84 respectively. The main findings of the study were: (1) the internal consistency of the scale was found to be 0.911 for the overall scale, showing the scale is highly reliable, (2) the factorial validity of the scale revealed 5 factorial structure of the Spiritual Values Scale. They are: (1) Altruistic Values (2) Humanistic Values (3) Personal Values (4) Divine Values, and (5) Affective Values. (3) The inter-factorial validity of the scale ranged between 0.444 to 0.646 among the extracted 5 factors. All factors were found significant at .001 level (2-tailed). The scale was found reliable and valid for the measurement of spiritual values.