The RSS-14: Development and Preliminary Validation of a 14-item Form of the Religious and Spiritual Struggles Scale

The Religious and Spiritual Struggles (RSS) Scale (Exline, Pargament, Grubbs, & Yali, 2014) is a 26-item measure assessing six types of religious/spiritual (r/s) struggles: divine, demonic, interpersonal (IP), moral, ultimate meaning (Ult. mean.), and doubt. A need has emerged for shorter measures when administration of the full RSS is not practical. The Religious and Spiritual Struggles Scale-14 (RSS-14) uses 14 items drawn directly from the full RSS, with subscales of two or three items each (vs. 4 or 5 items each on the RSS). Following preregistered hypotheses and analysis plans, our aim here was to gather initial data on the factor structure, reliability, and validity of the RSS-14 drawing from a longitudinal, Internet sample of U.S. adults who had reported some r/s struggle on an initial six-item screener (N = 2,889). Structural analyses at the 2-week (N = 1,911; Wave 1) and 4-week (N = 1,003; Wave 2) timepoints suggested a good fit for the six-factor model, although this structure emerged only in confirmatory analyses, not in exploratory analyses. Wave 1 analyses suggested reasonable evidence of reliability and validity (emphasizing convergent validity), using preregistered hypotheses with measures similar to those from the original RSS validation study (e.g., anger toward God, attributions for a specific struggle, depression, anxiety, other distress, and struggle indicators). RSS-14 scores correlated positively with religious participation (Rlg. partic.) and negatively with social desirability, as expected, suggesting that it may be wise to control these variables when doing analyses with the RSS-14. Taken together, these findings provide preliminary support for the RSS-14 as a relatively brief measure of r/s struggles.

Automated summary

This study introduces the Religious and Spiritual Struggles Scale (RSS) and its shorter version, the RSS-14, and validates their factor structure, reliability, and validity using longitudinal internet surveys. The results show a good fit for the six-factor model of the RSS-14. The measures used in the study demonstrate reasonable evidence of reliability and validity, with positive correlations between RSS-14 scores and religious participation, and negative correlations with social desirability.