On "spirituality," "religion," and "religions": a concept analysis.
OBJECTIVE
With increasing research on the role of religion and spirituality in the well-being of cancer patients, it is important to define distinctly the concepts that researchers use in these studies.


METHODS
Using the philosophies of Frege and James, this essay argues that the terms "religion" and "spirituality" denote the same concept, a concept that is identified with the Peace/Meaning subscale of the Functional Assessment of Chronic Illness Therapy--Spiritual Well-being Scale (FACIT-Sp).


RESULTS
The term "Religions" denotes the concept under which specific religious systems are categorized.


CONCLUSIONS
This article shows how muddling these concepts causes researchers to make claims that their findings do not support, and it ends in suggesting that future research must include universal measures of the concept of religion/spirituality in order to investigate further the role of interventions in the spiritual care of people living with cancer.
Lazenby
J Mark
JM
School of Nursing, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, USA. mark.lazenby@yale.edu
D006801:Humans; D009369:Neoplasms / Q000473:pathology* / Q000523:psychology*; D011788:Quality of Life; D012067:Religion; D012106:Research; D029181:Spirituality; D009626:Terminology as Topic