Factor Structure of the Daily Spiritual Experiences Scale in a Polish-Christian Sample

Abstract

The current article presents the factor structure of the Daily Spiritual Experience Scale (DSES) in a Polish-Christian sample. The DSES is a scale that attempts to measure a person’s perception of transcendent experiences in daily life. It covers the following constructs: awe, gratitude, mercy, a sense of connection with the transcendent, and compassionate love. Most validation studies on the DSES show the scale loadings on a single factor, although different populations can show different factor loadings. The study aims to verify the factor structure of the DSES results and to test the psychometric properties of its Polish version. The results of exploratory factor analysis conducted on a sample of 246 individuals and confirmatory factor analysis performed in a sample of 738 participants supported the single-factor model, which includes all 16 items of the DSES. Therefore, it was concluded that qualitatively different spiritual experiences have one common and integrated core with a homogeneous structure. Very high values of internal consistency measures indicate the excellent reliability of the Polish version of the DSES.

Keywords

• Daily Spiritual Experience Scale
• spiritual experiences
• psychology of religion
• exploratory factor analysis
• confirmatory factor analysis
• Christianity