Spiritual Health Inventory (SHI)*

©Martha Highfield, PhD, RN, AOCN

*For copy of SHI or more information contact martha.highfield@csun.edu

Brief Description:  The Spiritual Health Inventory (SHI) is a 31-item, Likert-type scale yielding a summated, ordinal-level spiritual health score.  The SHI is available in 2 forms: 

• Patient self-report SHI on which patients can report their own feelings & concerns related to spiritual health

• Nurse assessment SHI on which RNs can report their observations of patient feelings & concerns related to spiritual health.

Research use:

• Both forms have been used in studies to compare patient self-reported spiritual health with nursing assessment

• Some studies have used only one or the other tool.

• Translated & used internationally.

Reliability & Validity (Highfield, 1992):  

• Nurse SHI developed (1981). Investigator identified common feelings & concerns reflected in literature.  An expert theology & psychology panel categorized items according to a religious-existential framework based on Clinebell (1966). Tested with oncology RNs.

• Parallel Patient SHI items developed (1989) and piloted with oncology patients. (r=0.89).  

• Factor analysis of both forms suggested that the present 31 items represent 3 spiritual needs that explain 71+% of variance.  

• Chronbach's alpha 

  • RN SHI (r=.89- .92) 

  • Patient SHI (r=.77-.89) 

Present status: Multiple authors have used the SHI for 2 decades, but data has been generally unavailable for further analysis.  Internationally the patient SHI has been translated into Korean (r=.81) with 4 factors explaining 65.2% of variance (Lee, Kim, & Kim, 2001).