Spiritual Assessment: A Review of Major Qualitative Methods and a New Framework for Assessing Spirituality

Abstract

This article introduces a new qualitative spiritual assessment instrument. It reviews existing qualitative assessment tools and presents a new multidimensional spiritual assessment framework. The instrument consists of two components: a spiritual history in which consumers relate their spiritual life story in a manner analogous to a family history and an interpretive framework to assist practitioners in eliciting and synthesizing the full potentiality of strengths extant in clients' spiritual lives. Common spiritual strengths the framework is designed to evoke are discussed, and a number of interventions based on prevalent spiritual strengths are suggested.