Psychology of Religion: Research and Spirituality Discussion

This discussion board post summarizes an article by Park (2018) on the role of religion and spirituality (RS) in behavioral medicine, highlighting that a significant portion of the global population considers RS a cornerstone of their lives. The discussion delves into survey methods used to study spiritual experiences, such as large-scale longitudinal investigations focusing on religious practices like prayer, scripture reading, and festival celebrations. It addresses major challenges in RS research, including the subjective nature of spiritual experiences and potential biases of researchers. The post also explores how researchers can mitigate personal biases by focusing on the commonalities among different religions when designing behavior-based interventions. The discussion concludes by emphasizing the need for careful consideration of these factors when conducting research in this complex area.

Summary of the Article
Park, C. (2018). Advancing our understanding of religion and spirituality in the context of behavioral
medicine. PMC , https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5183527/.
In the current article, the author conducted research where he established religion and Spirituality
(RS) as a determinant of behavioral intervention. The crux of the article says that 80 percent of the
world population identifies RS as a backbone of their existence in this world (Poole,2011).
Image 1: The RS dependent model developed by the researchers, Retrieved From
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5183527/
In order to develop a hypothesis, the researchers presented model researchers came up with some
behavioral mechanism to influence the habits and psychology of patients and normal individuals
with the help of RS based interventions. They calculated the impact of these behavioral
interventions on the physical, mental, social and spiritual health of the individuals.

The output of this research fetched some positive results where the researchers stated that RS
based interventions can act as a bridge to support the psychology of the patients and has this ability
to bring them in the right kind of mindset to increase the impact of other medications.
Survey Methods
RS is a multi-dimensional subject where the survey population can be divided into many fractions. In
order to specify a survey population to fix the variables, researchers took the help of large scale
longitudinal investigations, this type of methodology gave them this liberty to act on a similar field
and bring down the RS based variables. Under this methodology, they considered common practices
of the religion as the qualification denominator.
They took this research to a new level when they picked up three activities, attending prayers,
reading scriptures and celebration of the festivals. They fixed the medication as a stationary point
and randomized the survey population for taking the impact based mechanisms. The random
sampling method allowed them to come up with some results that can be generalized for a broader
spectrum of the affected population (Koing,2012).
The biggest challenges
Most of the RS related impacts are internal and they vary from person to person, some individuals
can express them proficiently whereas the others can find it difficult to express. This expression
demands self-reporting. This self- reporting can be considered as the biggest challenge while
considering the correct output from an empirical survey (Krause,2010).
Most of the companies and authorities are not keen on funding RS based researches because they
feel that RS presents a” limited opportunity area” for the research where we cannot collect strong
corroborative evidence because of cultural variances and absence of proper metrics to examine
certain indicators.

The bias due to the personal religion of the researchers
When we explore the crux of the various religions we find that the basic view of the reality remains
the same. While designing behavior-based intervention most of the researchers apply this dictum as
a formula to counter the variables that may occur in a study. The same formula is applicable when a
researcher wants to control the personal bias caused by his religion.

Bibliography
Krause N. God-mediated control and change in self-rated health. International Journal for the
Psychology of Religion. 2010;20(4):267–287.
Koenig HG, King DE, Carson VB. Handbook of Religion and Health. 2nd edition. New York, NY, USA:
Oxford University Press; 2012
Park, C. (2018). Advancing our understanding of religion and spirituality in the context of behavioral
medicine. PMC , https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5183527/.
Poole R, Cook CCH. Praying with a patient constitutes a breach of professional boundaries in
psychiatric practice. British Journal of Psychiatry. 2011;199(2):94–98.