Spiritual Change in Drug Treatment: Utility of the Christian Inventory of Spirituality

ABSTRACT

The current study used data from reliability testing of the Christian Inventory of Spirituality (CIS) to (1) assess the utility of CIS in detecting differences in level of spirituality in residents of residential Christian faith-based substance abuse programs (RCFBSAPs); (2) test the hypothesis that residents who have been in the program for longer periods of time will have significantly higher levels of spirituality after controlling for relevant demographic characteristics; and (3) test the hypothesis that residents of programs that only use unlicensed staff and place higher importance on spirituality will have significantly higher levels of spirituality. A purposive sample of the cross-sectional data from the reliability testing of the CIS was used (n = 253). Analysis supported the hypothesis. Demographic characteristics were not associated with level of spirituality. The CIS proved to be useful in discriminating levels of spirituality. Further research is needed to examine spiritual change using randomized pre-post test designs.

KEYWORDS:

• Faith-based substance abuse treatment
• measurement
• spirituality
• program evaluation

Acknowledgments

The authors gratefully acknowledge the directors, staff, and residents at the participating faith-based agencies who supported and assisted in this research. This research was supported by the National Institute on Drug Abuse under the grant no. R24-DA13579-02S1.