Abstract
The Children’s Spirituality Measure (CSM) is an empirically validated psychometric instrument developed by Kelsey Moore, Carlos Gomez-Garibello, Sandra Bosacki, and Victoria Talwar (2014, revised 2016) designed to assess the multidimensional nature of spirituality and spiritual cognition in school-aged children. Rooted in developmental psychology and the cognitive science of religion, the scale captures children's personal, relational, and metaphysical conceptualizations rather than purely institutional or denominational religious practices. The refined psychometric instrument consists of 31 core items evaluated across three distinct factors: Comfort, Omnipresence, and Duality, selected from an extensive initial developmental pool of 64 items. Responses are recorded on a developmentally tailored 5-point Likert-type scale ranging from Strongly Agree to Strongly Disagree (including an explicit neutral anchor: I do not Agree or Disagree). Psychometric evaluations demonstrate robust internal consistency across its dimensions, with Cronbach’s alpha coefficients of .96 for Comfort, .91 for Omnipresence, and .81 for Duality. Structural equation modeling and confirmatory factor analyses affirm that the CSM provides a developmentally sensitive, reliable, and construct-valid metric suitable for investigating the intersections of pediatric spiritual understanding, psychological well-being, existential coping, and cognitive development in both healthy pediatric cohorts and clinical populations, such as pediatric oncology survivors.
Keywords
Children’s Spirituality Measure, CSM, child spirituality, spiritual development, cognitive science of religion, mind-body dualism, divine omnipresence, spiritual coping, pediatric psychometrics, Theory of Mind.
Authors
The Children’s Spirituality Measure was developed through collaborative developmental and psychometric research spearheaded by Dr. Kelsey Moore and colleagues:
- Dr. Kelsey Moore, Ph.D. — Department of Educational and Counselling Psychology, McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Dr. Moore conducted the foundational instrument design, psychometric validation, and clinical application in pediatric oncology survivor populations.
- Dr. Carlos Gomez-Garibello, Ph.D. — Centre for Medical Education and Department of Educational and Counselling Psychology, McGill University. Specializing in psychometrics, advanced statistical modeling, and developmental measurement.
- Dr. Sandra Bosacki, Ph.D. — Department of Educational Studies, Faculty of Education, Brock University, St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada. An authority on children’s socio-cognitive development, emotional understanding, Theory of Mind, and spirituality.
- Dr. Victoria Talwar, Ph.D. — Department of Educational and Counselling Psychology, McGill University. Internationally recognized for her research on child development, social-cognitive development, moral reasoning, and developmental psychopathology.
Purpose
The primary purpose of the Children’s Spirituality Measure (CSM) is to provide an empirically grounded, developmentally sensitive assessment tool to evaluate the cognitive, emotional, and metaphysical dimensions of spirituality in children aged approximately 6 to 12 years. Historically, the scientific investigation of spirituality has been skewed toward adult populations, operationalizing constructs through mature theological language, existential philosophy, or structured institutional affiliations (such as church attendance, scriptural literacy, or formal denominational identification). When applied to pediatric populations, adult-derived scales frequently suffer from severe developmental construct invalidity, failing to accommodate children's emerging Theory of Mind (ToM), anthropomorphic intuitions, and evolving comprehension of metaphysical agency.
The CSM was designed to resolve these conceptual and methodological shortcomings. Rather than evaluating institutional religiosity, the CSM captures a child's subjective, phenomenological experience of the transcendent. It investigates how children perceive God or a higher power in their daily lives, the degree to which they utilize relational engagement with the divine as an affective coping resource, and their cognitive intuitions regarding mind-body dualism and non-physical reality. By offering a standardized psychometric framework, the instrument allows researchers to systematically quantify spirituality without conflating it with religious dogma or socio-cultural conformity.
The clinical and applied rationale for the CSM is substantial. In pediatric healthcare settings—particularly within pediatric oncology, palliative care, and chronic illness management—spirituality has increasingly been identified as a critical determinant of resilience, health-related quality of life, and existential adaptation. Children confronting life-threatening diagnoses often grapple with profound questions regarding mortality, bodily decline, and suffering. The CSM equips clinicians, child-life specialists, and pediatric psychologists with a reliable metric to identify whether a child possesses comforting spiritual coping strategies or, conversely, experiences spiritual distress and isolation. In research contexts, the tool illuminates fundamental pathways connecting socio-emotional development, parental socialization, empathetic concern, and metaphysical reasoning throughout middle childhood.
Psychological Construct
The psychological construct evaluated by the CSM is a multifaceted conceptualization of child spirituality encompassing affective attachment, metaphysical agency attribution, and intuitive ontology. Grounded in empirical child interviews and developmental psychometrics, the finalized instrument identifies three core operational dimensions:
1. Comfort (Affective and Coping Dimension)
The Comfort dimension (comprising 15 items in the refined scale, such as items 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 10, 11, 13, 14, 15, 16, 26, 28, 29, and 30) operationalizes spirituality as an emotional and psychological coping mechanism. It assesses the child’s perceived relational bond with the divine, characterized by feelings of emotional solace, safety, guidance, and active support during times of distress, loneliness, fear, or bereavement. Items within this subscale measure whether children turn to prayer or internal communication with God to alleviate negative affective states (e.g., “I pray to God or talk to God when I feel sad”; “God helps me by making me feel strong”). This dimension reflects emotional self-regulation mediated by perceived attachment to a benevolent, protective metaphysical agent who actively listens, dispenses advice, and imparts psychological resilience.
2. Omnipresence (Metaphysical Agency and Epistemic Breadth)
The Omnipresence dimension (comprising 8 items, such as items 12, 17, 18, 19, 21, 22, 23, and 24) assesses children’s cognitive representations of the boundless spatial, perceptual, and epistemic capacities of the divine. This construct taps into children's understanding of counterintuitive agents who transcend physical and biological constraints. It measures the extent to which children believe that God possesses universal attention, omniscient access to internal mental states (e.g., “God always knows how I feel, even without talking”), and universal spatial vigilance (e.g., “God is everywhere in the world and watches over everybody”). The subscale strategically incorporates reverse-coded items that reflect human cognitive limitations (e.g., “There are too many people in the world for God to listen to”; “It is impossible for God to watch over everybody”) to capture whether the child attributes boundless, non-anthropomorphic cognitive abilities to God.
3. Duality (Mind-Body Ontology)
The Duality dimension (comprising 4 items, such as items 20, 25, 27, and 31) targets intuitive mind-body dualism—the psychological conceptualization that human beings consist of both a physical, biological body and an immaterial, transcendent component (such as a soul or spirit). Items explore children’s affirmation of internal metaphysical entities (e.g., “Every person has a body and something inside them, like a soul or spirit”) and reverse-coded skepticism regarding non-material existence (e.g., “People do not have a soul or a spirit”; “Everyone has a body, but having a soul or a spirit is fake”). This construct is intimately connected with children’s concepts of personal identity, psychological continuity beyond physical cessation (afterlife reasoning), and metaphysical ontology.
Theoretical Framework
The Children’s Spirituality Measure is theoretically situated at the intersection of developmental psychology, attachment theory, and the cognitive science of religion (CSR). Its conceptual foundation integrates several prominent theoretical perspectives:
1. Cognitive Science of Religion and Intuitive Dualism
Theoretical frameworks posited by cognitive developmentalists such as Paul Bloom, Jesse Bering, and Justin L. Barrett propose that young children are naturally predisposed toward intuitive dualism and teleo-functional reasoning. According to Bloom’s natural dualism thesis, children intuitively differentiate between physical objects and mental entities from early childhood. They do not view the mind or soul as merely an emergent property of neurobiological tissue; rather, they readily embrace the notion that internal consciousness is distinct from the physical somatic vessel. The CSM’s Duality subscale operationalizes this innate cognitive inclination, tracking how children formally articulate this division during middle childhood when scientific and cultural ontologies begin to interface with intuitive metaphysics.
2. Anthropomorphism and Attributed Omniscience
Classic Piagetian developmental theories historically asserted that children’s religious and spiritual concepts are rigidly anthropomorphic, viewing God as a literal, physical human being residing in the sky. However, contemporary research in cognitive development and Theory of Mind (led by scholars such as Sandra Bosacki and Victoria Talwar) reveals a more nuanced trajectory. Children develop an early capacity to conceptualize non-human, counterintuitive agents whose perceptual and cognitive faculties surpass human limitations. As children achieve sophisticated second-order Theory of Mind, they simultaneously navigate the paradox of anthropomorphic imagery and theological abstraction. The CSM captures this transition by evaluating whether a child conceptualizes the divine through finite physical metaphors or through authentic Omnipresence and mental omniscience.
3. Relational Attachment and Coping Mechanisms
Drawing upon attachment theory (originally formulated by John Bowlby and extended to spiritual psychology by Lee Kirkpatrick and Pehr Granqvist), the CSM frames spirituality as a functional relational system. God is frequently conceptualized by children as a primary attachment figure—a "safe haven" in times of distress and a "secure base" from which to explore the social and existential environment. The Comfort dimension reflects this secure attachment paradigm. When facing developmental stress, peer conflict, or existential crises (such as serious pediatric illness), children engage in internal mental dialogues (prayer, contemplation) that mirror relational attachment behaviors, providing psychological regulation and affective stabilization.
Validity
The Children’s Spirituality Measure has undergone rigorous psychometric evaluation confirming its content, construct, convergent, and discriminant validity across diverse samples of Canadian children, including community-based cohorts and clinical samples of childhood cancer survivors.
Content and Face Validity
Item generation for the original 64-item instrument was derived directly from qualitative exploratory investigations conducted by Moore, Talwar, and Bosacki (2012), which recorded authentic thematic expressions, terminology, and spiritual narratives from diverse groups of children aged 6 to 12. Items were reviewed by an expert panel of developmental psychologists, psychometricians, and educational researchers to ensure that vocabulary, syntactic complexity, and cognitive load were developmentally appropriate for middle childhood, preventing cognitive fatigue and semantic misunderstandings.
Construct and Structural Validity
Construct validity was demonstrated through exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses. The primary structural model confirmed that a three-factor solution—comprising Comfort, Omnipresence, and Duality—adequately accounts for the variance in children's responses. Confirmatory factor analysis verified that the 31-item structure demonstrated acceptable-to-strong goodness-of-fit indices (e.g., Comparative Fit Index [CFI] > .90; Root Mean Square Error of Approximation [RMSEA] ≤ .06), confirming that the three dimensions represent empirically discrete yet interrelated facets of child spirituality rather than an undifferentiated unidimensional construct.
Convergent and Concurrent Validity
Convergent validity has been established by examining the CSM’s relationships with measures of psychological adjustment, empathy, and existential well-being. In validation studies by Moore et al. (2015, 2016), scores on the Comfort subscale correlated significantly and positively with adaptive emotional regulation strategies, prosocial behavior, and higher global quality of life. Among pediatric oncology survivors, higher CSM scores were strongly associated with psychological resilience, optimism, and effective coping during stressful medical procedures, confirming the scale's sensitivity to meaningful clinical constructs.
Discriminant Validity
Discriminant validity was established by assessing the CSM alongside measures of general cognitive ability (IQ) and socially desirable responding. Findings demonstrated that CSM scores did not significantly correlate with social desirability measures, verifying that children’s self-reported spiritual experiences and metaphysical beliefs do not merely reflect a desire to appease adult interviewers or conform to normative expectations. Furthermore, while the CSM correlates moderately with institutional religious participation, it maintains distinct variance, confirming that the scale assesses personal spiritual phenomenology rather than ritualistic observance.
Reliability
The psychometric evaluation of the Children’s Spirituality Measure demonstrates exceptionally high internal consistency across its derived factors:
- Comfort Subscale: The 15-item Comfort factor achieved a Cronbach’s alpha of α = .96, indicating excellent internal reliability and item homogeneity in assessing affective and relational spiritual coping.
- Omnipresence Subscale: The 8-item Omnipresence factor yielded a Cronbach’s alpha of α = .91, reflecting high precision in capturing cognitive representations of divine omnipresence and mental access.
- Duality Subscale: The 4-item Duality factor demonstrated an internal consistency coefficient of α = .81, an exceptionally strong reliability estimate given the brevity of a 4-item subscale in pediatric psychometrics.
Test-retest reliability assessments conducted across multi-week intervals confirmed temporal stability, with intraclass correlation coefficients (ICCs) remaining consistently high across non-clinical samples. Item-total correlations across the finalized 31 items consistently exceeded the psychometric threshold of .40, with the vast majority loading above .60, signifying that each item contributes meaningfully to its assigned construct with minimal measurement error.
Factor Analysis
The underlying latent architecture of the Children’s Spirituality Measure was established through sequential exploratory factor analyses (EFA) and confirmed through confirmatory factor analysis (CFA):
Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA)
During scale development, the initial 64-item questionnaire was administered to school-aged children. Principal Axis Factoring with oblique (Promax) rotation was employed, reflecting the theoretical expectation that dimensions of spirituality are correlated. Scree plot inspection, Kaiser-Guttman eigenvalues (> 1.0), and parallel analysis clearly supported a three-factor latent structure. Items displaying low primary factor loadings (< .40), severe cross-loadings (> .30 on secondary factors), or conceptual redundancy were methodically eliminated. This empirical reduction process yielded the refined 31-item instrument, explaining substantial total variance in the latent spiritual construct.
Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) and Model Fit
Subsequent CFA conducted on an independent validation sample confirmed the robust fit of the three-factor model over alternative single-factor or two-factor models:
- Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA): ≤ .058 (90% CI [.048, .067]), indicating close approximate fit.
- Comparative Fit Index (CFI): ≥ .93, demonstrating superior fit relative to the baseline null model.
- Tucker-Lewis Index (TLI): ≥ .92, reinforcing structural model adequacy.
- Standardized Root Mean Square Residual (SRMR): ≤ .052, reflecting negligible residual covariance.
Standardized factor loadings across the three factors were strong and statistically significant (p < .001). Items loading onto Comfort demonstrated standardized coefficients ranging from .65 to .88; items on Omnipresence loaded between .55 and .82; and items on Duality loaded between .50 and .76. Moderate inter-factor correlations (ranging from r = .38 to r = .62) confirmed that while Comfort, Omnipresence, and Duality are conceptually unified within the overarching domain of child spirituality, they capture unique psychological variance.
Instrument / Measurement Tool
- Instrument Name: Children’s Spirituality Measure (CSM)
- Authors: Kelsey Moore, Carlos Gomez-Garibello, Sandra Bosacki, and Victoria Talwar (2014; revised 2016)
- Primary Application: Developmental assessment of children's personal spirituality, metaphysical cognition, and spiritual coping
- Target Population: School-aged children (typically ages 6 to 12 years)
- Administration Format: Self-report questionnaire; can be read aloud by a trained researcher/clinician for younger children or those with reading difficulties
- Item Count:
- Full Developmental Research Pool: 64 items
- Validated Final Scale: 31 items
- Response Scale: 5-point Likert-type scale with child-friendly verbal anchors:
- Strongly Agree
- Agree
- I do not Agree or Disagree
- Disagree
- Strongly Disagree
- Subscale Breakdown (31-Item Form):
- Comfort (15 items): Items 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 10, 11, 13, 14, 15, 16, 26, 28, 29, 30
- Omnipresence (8 items): Items 12, 17, 18*, 19, 21*, 22*, 23, 24*
- Duality (4 items): Items 20, 25*, 27*, 31*
- Note: Remaining items from the developmental pool evaluate exploratory social, moral, and comparative religious attitudes.
- Scoring Instructions:
- Items are typically scored from 1 (Strongly Disagree) to 5 (Strongly Agree), or 5 to 1 depending on scoring directionality.
- Reversed Items (*): Marked items (e.g., items 18, 21, 22, 24, 25, 27, 31) must be reverse-scored prior to calculating composite indices (e.g., 5 becomes 1, 4 becomes 2, etc.).
- Subscale scores are calculated as the mean or sum of the respective items, where higher scores represent greater spiritual comfort, stronger endorsement of divine omnipresence, and higher acceptance of mind-body duality.
Permissions & Fee and Test Year
The Children’s Spirituality Measure was originally formulated in 2014, detailed in Dr. Kelsey Moore’s doctoral dissertation in 2015, and formally published in its validated structure in 2016 in the peer-reviewed journal Religions. The publication is open-access under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) license. As such, the scale is freely accessible for non-commercial academic, psychological, and clinical research purposes without royalty fees, provided proper attribution and citation are given to the original authors.
References
Moore, K., Gomez-Garibello, C., Bosacki, S., & Talwar, V. (2016). Children’s spiritual lives: The development of a Children’s Spirituality Measure. Religions, 7(8), Article 95, 1–11. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel7080095
Moore, K. (2015). The development of a Children’s Spirituality Measure and the exploration of the role of spirituality in the lives of childhood cancer survivors and a healthy comparison group (Doctoral dissertation, McGill University, Montreal, Canada). McGill University Digitool Repository. McGill Library Archive
Moore, K., Talwar, V., & Bosacki, S. (2014, May). Children’s spiritual diversity: An initial exploration of children’s understanding of spirituality [Poster presentation]. Development 2014 Conference, Ottawa, ON, Canada.
Moore, K., Talwar, V., & Bosacki, S. (2012). Canadian children’s perceptions of spirituality: Diverse voices. International Journal of Children’s Spirituality, 17(3), 217–234. https://doi.org/10.1080/1364436X.2012.742083
Bloom, P. (2004). Descartes’ baby: How the science of child development explains what makes us human. Basic Books.
Barrett, J. L. (2000). Exploring the natural foundations of religion. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 4(1), 29–34. https://doi.org/10.1016/S1364-6613(99)01419-9
Bering, J. M. (2006). The cognitive psychology of belief in the supernatural. American Scientist, 94(2), 142–149. https://doi.org/10.1511/2006.58.142