Daily Spiritual Experience Scale

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A list of published studies using the DSES.

A list of translations of the Underwood DSES.

The Daily Spiritual Experience Scale, created by Dr. Lynn Underwood, is being used in many studies to investigate ordinary spiritual experiences and their role in life. This page will serve as a central information site regarding the scale and its use.

Contact Lynn Underwood at lynnunderwood@researchintegration.org

Key articles about the DSES:

This article provides the conceptual framework for the DSES, provides scoring guidelines, and includes accurate English and Spanish versions of the scale:

[Underwood (2006).] "Ordinary Spiritual Experience: Qualitative Research, Interpretive Guidelines, and Population Distribution for the Daily Spiritual Experience Scale," is designed to help scholars understand, use and score the DSES. Archive for the Psychology of Religion/Archiv fuer Religionspsychologie, 28:1 (2006), 181-218.

This article describes psychometric qualities of the scale and some of its applications:

[Underwood and Teresi (2002)]. "The Daily Spiritual Experience Scale: Development, Theoretical Description, Reliability, Exploratory Factor Analysis, and Preliminary Construct Validity Using Health-Related Data", Annals of Behavioral Medicine.

Closely related to the DSES work is an article by Dr. Underwood on the place of spirituality and religiousness in an inclusive concept of health: "A Working Model of Health: Spirituality and Religiousness as Resources: Applications to Persons with Disabilities"

Introduction to the Underwood DSES

There are two major forms of the scale currently in use. One is the full 16-item scale. The second is a 6-item scale that was adapted for use in the Brief Multidimensional Measure for Religiousness and Spirituality (Idler et al, 2003). The six items are not ideal in many ways, as the wording is not identical and some items are double-barreled. Of these two, the 16-item scale is much preferred, although in many studies the two scales show a high correlation in performance.

Also, various researchers have used subsets of the 16-item scale for various purposes. At this stage in the scale's development this can be appropriate, as long as the rationale is sound. Two of the items, for example, have been used as a compassionate love subscale, and there are other possible subgroupings of items.

Factor analysis of the scale continues as research results emerge. Many studies show the scale loading on one major factor, with the two compassionate love items loading possibly on another factor. The Chronbach's Alpha for the scale is consistently above 0.9. The scale tends to perform in a more state-like than trait-like manner, lending it to examinations of change over time.

Some have changed the wording of the scale items substantively and call their versions a scale of Daily Spiritual Experiences. Be cautious regarding this. The wording of this scale is critical to its effectiveness and ability to tap the construct of interest. Changes in wording can strongly affect performance. The intials DSES have also been used for a recent Depression scale. Various investigators since 2007 on have begun to call this scale Underwood's DSES for clarity.

Translations. There have been a number of translations of this scale into a variety of languages. Translation needs to be done carefully as language is particularly important and cultural sensitivity is needed. See Underwood (2006) for further advice on translating. Lynn is coordinating information on translations and is glad to help out with back translations to assure that the underlying construct has been tapped.