Measuring spiritual well-being in people with cancer: The functional assessment of chronic illness therapy—spiritual well-being scale (FACIT-Sp)

A significant relation between religion and better health has been demonstrated in a variety of healthy and patient populations. In the past several years, there has been a focus on the role of spirituality, as distinctfrom religion, in health promotion and coping with illness. Despite the growing interest, there remains a dearth of well-validated, psychometrically sound instruments to measure aspects of spirituality. In this article we report on the development and testing of a measure of spiritual well-being, the Functional Assessment of Chronic Illness Therapy-Spiritual Well-Being (FACIT-Sp), within two samples of cancer patients. The instrument comprises two subscales--one measuring a sense of meaning and…