title: Defining and Measuring Spirituality in South African Specialist Psychiatry.
abstract: To define the meaning of "spirituality" in a South African phenomenological, theory-generating qualitative inquiry, theory construction methodology was used. This refers to the tradition of nursing theory development, where a central core concept identified from the integrated data-in this case, interviews and the literature content-had to be defined. A major focus of the study was to distinguish spirituality from religion. The denotative and connotative meanings of "spirituality" were explored to establish the components for a definition. The attributes of this definition included that spirituality constitutes a "quality", a "journey", a "relationship" as well as a "capacity". While these items derived from this local definition of spirituality can be proposed for inclusion in a questionnaire for measuring spirituality in a South African context, the limits of the scope of the explorative qualitative inquiry from which it was derived must be considered.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry, University of the Witwatersrand, P.O. Box 1247, Pinegowrie, Johannesburg, 2123, South Africa, grasontwerp@mwebbiz.co.za.
authors.forename: A B R
authors.initials: AB
authors.lastname: Janse van Rensburg
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Poggenpoel
authors.forename: C P H
authors.initials: CP
authors.lastname: Myburgh
authors.forename: C P
authors.initials: CP
authors.lastname: Szabo
mesh_terms: D006801:Humans; D011570:Psychiatry; D036301:Qualitative Research; D012067:Religion; D013019:South Africa; D029181:Spirituality; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires