Relationships between psychometrically distinct Brief Multidimensional Measure of Religiousness/Spirituality (BMMRS) factors and mental health among U.S. college students

ABSTRACT

The current study tested the extent to which demographic, personality, spiritual, and religious variables accounted for variance in physical and mental health measures using recently identified psychometrically distinct factors of the Brief Multidimensional Measure of Religiousness/Spirituality. Based on a non-clinical sample of 249 U.S. undergraduate students, hierarchical multiple regressions were significant for mental, but not physical, health, with 33% of the variance explained by demographic and personality measures and an additional 8% of the variance explained by measures of spirituality (i.e., positive and negative) but not religiosity. The results confirm that spiritual variables are unique predictors of mental health beyond demographics and personality, as well as a need to consider both positive and negative spiritual beliefs when predicting mental health.

KEYWORDS:

• BMMRS
• spirituality
• religiosity
• personality
• health
• hierarchical regression

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Acknowledgements

The data presented here are drawn from a larger project on the relationship between religiousness, spirituality, health, and virtues. Given the extent of this project and data, one additional manuscript discussing a factor analyses of these data has recently been published at Mental Health, Religion, & Culture (Johnstone et al., 2020).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).