Faith, spirituality, and values among Asian-American older adults: an exploratory factor analysis of the Multidimensional Measures of Religion and Spirituality

ABSTRACT

The use of dominant group-oriented scales is problematic for Asian-Americans with religious pluralism. To identify constructs of faith, spirituality, and values, an exploratory factor analysis using principal axis factoring with varimax rotation was performed to analyse the 30 items in the Multidimensional Measures of Religion and Spirituality (MMRS). Five primary factors were found for Korean- and Chinese-American older adults (n = 159): (1) religious practice, (2) understanding of the divine, (3) faith-based community as social capital, (4) spiritual coping, and (5) universal values. These empirically derived factors may be a more accurate measure for Korean- and Chinese-Americans who present religious pluralism than the original MMRS Scale.

KEYWORDS:

• Korean-Americans
• Chinese-Americans
• older adults
• spirituality
• exploratory factor analysis

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by John A Hartford Foundation.