Spirituality, personality and general health among college students

Pages: 475-479
Jwmwishree Boro and D. Dhanalakshmi (Department of Applied Psychology, Pondicherry University, Kalapet, Pondicherry)

Spirituality is recognised as an important predictor of health and wellbeing in adults. In current days it seems that there is growing interest in determining the specific nature of the relationship that exists among spirituality, personality and general health. The purpose of the current study is to explore the relationship among spirituality, personality and general health among college students and to see if there is any difference between young adults in spirituality, personality factors and general health. The current study is a cross-sectional study on a randomly selected sample of 113 college students. Spirituality Questionnaire (Parsian & Dunning), NEO-Five Factor Inventory (Costa and McCrae) and General Health Questionnaire (Goldberg) were administered on them after obtaining permission from the college and University authorities. The participants were briefed about the study prior to the administration. Pearson’s correlation, t-test and multiple regression were carried out to analyze the data. The results indicated that spirituality and dimensions of spirituality are significantly related with conscientiousness; self awareness- a dimension of spirituality is related with Neuroticism and Extraversion; Spirituality is related with Extraversion; and general health is positively correlated with neuroticism and negatively correlated with openness to experience, agreeableness and conscientiousness. The results indicated that women were higher on conscientiousness than men. Spirituality, neuroticism, and agreeableness seem to predict general health. The study suggests that spirituality and personality may be important factors that can influence health and therefore appropriate interventions that would promote more spiritual practices may be introduced.