Structure of Prayer Scale

Abstract

The Structure of Prayer Scale (SPS; Luckow, Ladd, Spilka, McIntosh, Parks, & Laforett, 1997) is a multidimensional psychometric instrument developed within the psychology of religion to assess the diverse cognitive, behavioral, affective, and liturgical dimensions of private and communal prayer practices. While historical operationalizations of prayer often treated it as a unidimensional frequency variable (e.g., how often an individual prays), psychometricians have increasingly demonstrated that prayer represents a complex, differentiated cognitive-affective coping system. The SPS operationalizes prayer across six empirical dimensions: Confession (5 items), Petition (3 items), Ritual (3 items), Meditation-Improvement (5 items), Habit (4 items), and Compassionate Petition (8 items). Comprising 28 items rated on a 6-point Likert scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 6 (strongly agree), the instrument facilitates granular investigation into how specific prayer modalities correlate differentially with psychological well-being, religious coping, depressive symptom reduction, forgiveness processes, and subjective health outcomes. Validation research yields varying yet theoretically coherent internal consistency estimates across subscales, ranging from moderate to high reliability (Cronbach’s α = .44 to .95). This article provides a comprehensive academic analysis of the SPS, examining its psychometric taxonomy, theoretical foundations within attribution and coping theory, construct validity evidence, structural factor configurations, administration parameters, and clinical utility.

Keywords

Structure of Prayer Scale, prayer dimensions, psychology of religion, religious coping, petitionary prayer, contemplative prayer, psychometrics, spiritual assessment, mental health, Bernard Spilka, Kevin L. Ladd.

Authors

The Structure of Prayer Scale was conceptualized, designed, and psychometrically validated through collaborative research led by Anne Luckow, Kevin L. Ladd, Bernard Spilka, Daniel N. McIntosh, Cynthia Parks, and Daniele Laforett (1997) at the University of Denver and affiliated research institutions.

• Bernard Spilka, Ph.D.: Professor Emeritus of Psychology at the University of Denver, widely regarded as a foundational pioneer in the empirical psychology of religion, attributional models of religious belief, and the multidimensional assessment of spiritual coping.
• Kevin L. Ladd, Ph.D.: Professor of Psychology at Indiana University South Bend, renowned for his theoretical and psychometric work on the cognitive architecture, physiological correlates, and structural dimensions of prayer.
• Daniel N. McIntosh, Ph.D.: Professor of Psychology at the University of Denver, specializing in emotional processing, social-cognitive psychology, and how religious schemas mediate psychological trauma and coping.
• Anne Luckow, Cynthia Parks, and Daniele Laforett: Psychometric investigators and researchers who contributed substantially to initial item generation, data collection across diverse demographic samples, and exploratory structural analyses.

Purpose

The primary purpose of the Structure of Prayer Scale is to overcome the empirical limitations of reductionist, single-item religious indicators. In early epidemiologic and social-psychological literature, prayer was frequently indexed solely by behavioral frequency (e.g., “How many times a day or week do you pray?”). This methodology obscured vital qualitative variations in religious functioning. Two individuals who report daily prayer may engage in fundamentally distinct phenomenological experiences: one may engage in rote, anxious, or guilt-driven supplication aimed at obtaining material favors, whereas the other may engage in mystical communion, introspective self-regulation, or altruistic intercession for suffering communities. The SPS serves several distinct scientific and clinical purposes:

• Multidimensional Deconstruction of Prayer Behavior: The SPS maps the distinct structural elements that constitute private devotion, distinguishing between self-directed, other-directed, inward-reflective, and habit-driven forms of prayer.
• Differential Health and Well-Being Predictor: By disaggregating prayer into six functional dimensions, the SPS enables researchers to identify why specific prayer modes correlate positively with subjective life satisfaction, whereas other modes (such as egoistic petitionary prayer or compulsive ritual) may correlate with elevated anxiety, distress, or depressive symptoms.
• Spiritual and Religious Coping Assessment: The scale enables health psychologists and behavioral medicine researchers to evaluate how individuals utilize distinct prayer modalities when facing bereavement, chronic physical illness, trauma, or interpersonal conflict.
• Clinical and Pastoral Diagnostics: Within clinical psychology, counseling psychology, and pastoral counseling, the scale offers an objective profile of a client’s religious life, identifying whether their spiritual practice is predominantly guilt-mitigating, meditative and restorative, or rigidly habitual.

Psychological Construct

The SPS operationalizes prayer not as an undifferentiated mystical impulse, but as a structured behavioral, cognitive, and affective coping system. The instrument measures six specific psychological constructs:

1. Confession (5 Items)

The Confession subscale assesses prayers centered on moral introspection, moral accounting, disclosure of personal shortcomings, guilt alleviation, and the pursuit of spiritual reconciliation (e.g., Item 3: “It is important to me to tell God about my sins or faults”; Item 17: “When I pray, I confess to God the things I should not have done”). Theoretically, this construct reflects cognitive-affective self-regulation wherein the individual confronts personal transgressions within an perceived supportive, transcendent relationship, facilitating catharsis, moral clarity, and relief from internal conflict.

2. Petition (3 Items)

The Petition subscale measures self-interested or instrumental prayer aimed at securing concrete outcomes, material advantages, personal assistance, or problem resolution (e.g., Item 13: “I must admit that I usually prayer to get something”; Item 15: “When I pray, I ask God for special favors”). This construct is frequently associated with an external locus of control or transactional spiritual schema, wherein prayer functions primarily as a request for divine intervention in personal dilemmas.

3. Ritual (3 Items)

The Ritual dimension evaluates the formal, ordered, and standardized mechanics of prayer (e.g., Item 1: “When I pray alone, I have a ritual that I adhere to strictly”; Item 20: “When I pray, I have certain words of phrases that I repeat a number of times”). In cognitive terms, ritual prayer relies on structured liturgical scripts, repetitive verbal formulations, and orderliness, providing cognitive containment and behavioral predictability during existential uncertainty.

4. Meditation-Improvement (5 Items)

The Meditation-Improvement subscale measures inward-directed contemplative prayer, emotional centering, personal transformation, and spiritual communion (e.g., Item 2: “Through deep pray I am able to know God better”; Item 16: “Prayer helps me keep my life balanced and happy”; Item 26: “Prayer is a way for me to connect with my inner spirit”). This construct captures the integrative, self-actualizing functions of spiritual devotion, aligning closely with intrinsic religious motivation and contemplative mindfulness.

5. Habit (4 Items)

The Habit subscale indexes situational, automatic, and scheduled religious routines tied to circadian or behavioral cues (e.g., Item 10: “I usually say a prayer before each meal”; Item 12: “I always pray before I go to sleep”; Item 28: “I pray daily”). Rather than assessing the subjective content of prayer, Habit reflects behavioral automaticity, socialization, and the integration of prayer practices into daily living scripts.

6. Compassionate Petition (8 Items)

The Compassionate Petition dimension taps intercessory, other-oriented, grateful, and altruistic prayer (e.g., Item 11: “I like to say prayers for people about whom I care very much”; Item 19: “I ask God to help others when I am unable to”; Item 6: “I pray to give thanks for all God has done for me”). This construct synthesizes prosocial empathy, gratitude, and communal responsibility, reflecting an outward-focused spiritual orientation wherein the petitioner acts as a moral and emotional proxy for others.

Theoretical Framework

The conceptual architecture of the Structure of Prayer Scale is grounded primarily in the cognitive-attributional framework of religion advanced by Bernard Spilka (Spilka, Shaver, & Kirkpatrick, 1985) and the cognitive-phenomenological prayer models later developed by Kevin L. Ladd (Ladd & Spilka, 2002, 2006). This theoretical tradition asserts that religious thought and behavior represent meaning-making mechanisms designed to satisfy three universal human motivations: the need for meaning, the need for control over outcomes, and the need for self-esteem and belonging.

Historically, psychological conceptualizations of prayer evolved through several paradigms:

• Typological Theories (Poloma & Pendleton): Margaret Poloma and George H. Gallup Jr. proposed four distinct types of prayer: Ritual (reading or reciting prepared prayers), Petitionary (asking for material or specific personal needs), Colloquial (conversational dialogue with God), and Meditative (feeling God’s presence, adoration). The SPS builds upon and refines this taxonomy by disaggregating colloquial and petitionary forms into distinct self-focused versus altruistic/compassionate clusters.
• Cognitive-Attributional Theory (Spilka et al.): Spilka and colleagues argued that prayer provides an attributional bridge between ambiguous worldly events and divine agency. Petitionary and ritual prayers represent attempts to navigate secondary control (Rothbaum, Weisz, & Snyder, 1982), whereas meditative and confessional prayers serve as cognitive reappraisal mechanisms that adjust personal schemas to align with perceived transcendent expectations.
• Multidirectional Geometric Model (Ladd & Spilka): In subsequent theoretical elaborations, Ladd and Spilka posited that prayer functions across three cognitive axes: Inward (self-examination, confession, meditation), Upward (adoration, divine connection, ritual), and Outward (intercession, compassionate petition for family, community, and adversaries). The SPS captures these axes through its empirical factor structure.
• Attachment Theory to the Divine (Kirkpatrick): Within John Bowlby’s attachment theory framework, as applied to religion by Lee A. Kirkpatrick, God serves as an attachment figure who offers a “safe haven” and a “secure base.” The SPS subscales of Confession and Compassionate Petition operationalize this attachment relationship by examining whether prayer is utilized as an emotional refuge during interpersonal and existential vulnerability.

Validity

Validation studies across clinical, community, and university cohorts demonstrate robust construct, convergent, discriminant, and predictive validity for the Structure of Prayer Scale:

Construct and Structural Validity

Construct validity has been established through continuous factor-analytic investigations demonstrating that the six-factor configuration accounts for significantly greater variance in religious behavior than competing unidimensional or two-factor models (such as simply contrasting “internal” vs. “external” prayer). Factor structures hold across both collegiate and adult community samples (Luckow et al., 1997; Ladd & Spilka, 2002).

Convergent and Discriminant Validity

• Religious Orientation: The Meditation-Improvement and Compassionate Petition subscales demonstrate strong positive correlations with Gordon Allport’s Intrinsic Religious Orientation (typically r = .50 to .72), indicating that individuals who view religion as their primary life motive utilize contemplative and altruistic prayer. Conversely, the Petition subscale correlates positively with Extrinsic Religious Orientation (utilitarian, instrumental religion), establishing clear discriminant divergence between different prayer functions.
• Personality Correlates: In investigations utilizing the Five-Factor Model of Personality, Compassionate Petition correlates positively with Agreeableness and Empathy, whereas Ritual correlates with Conscientiousness and high Need for Closure.
• Distinction from Simple Frequency: Correlational analyses indicate that total prayer frequency accounts for only a minor proportion of variance within specific subscales (such as Petition or Confession), proving that the SPS assesses unique qualitative and stylistic constructs that behavioral frequency counts overlook.

Criterion and Predictive Validity in Mental Health

Extensive research demonstrates the predictive utility of the SPS regarding health and clinical indices:

• Depression and Subjective Well-Being: In an extensive empirical investigation into the “God Factor,” de la Mora (2004) observed that the Meditation-Improvement and Compassionate Petition subscales significantly predicted lower depressive symptomatology and heightened life satisfaction. In contrast, heavy reliance on self-centered Petition prayer was associated with higher psychological distress, reflecting unsuccessful coping during crisis situations.
• Interpersonal Forgiveness: In a clinical doctoral dissertation study examining prayer interventions, Vasiliauskas (2010) demonstrated that participants engaging in high levels of Compassionate Petition exhibited accelerated therapeutic forgiveness processes following interpersonal transgressions, mediated by heightened empathy for the transgressor.

Reliability

The internal consistency of the Structure of Prayer Scale has been investigated across diverse adult, undergraduate, and health-related cohorts. Reliability coefficients (α) vary across subscales due to variations in item length and sample characteristics:

• Compassionate Petition: Consistently exhibits excellent internal consistency across all validation samples, with Cronbach’s α values ranging between .81 and .95 (Luckow et al., 1997; de la Mora, 2004). The 8-item length and strong thematic coherence of intercessory concern contribute to its exceptional stability.
• Confession: Demonstrates acceptable to high internal consistency, with α values documented between .58 and .89. Variations depend largely on whether the sample is drawn from traditions that practice formal liturgical confession (e.g., Roman Catholic or Orthodox) versus evangelical traditions emphasizing informal confession.
• Habit: Demonstrates good internal consistency, ranging from .67 to .88, reflecting the temporal stability of routine prayer habits across the day (meals, bedtime, mornings).
• Ritual: Demonstrates moderate to good reliability, with α coefficients between .68 and .80. Despite having only 3 items, its focus on liturgical sequencing and verbal repetition provides solid measurement precision.
• Petition: As a short, 3-item subscale, internal consistency estimates range from .44 to .81. The lower boundary (α = .44) observed in some normative populations stems from social desirability bias, as some respondents are reluctant to endorse “praying to get something” or “asking for special favors.”
• Meditation-Improvement: Exhibits substantial variation in published literature, with α values spanning .19 to .86. While collegiate samples frequently demonstrate high consistency (α > .80), lower reliability coefficients have emerged in specific secular or heterogeneous samples where items indexing internal spirit connection and behavioral self-improvement do not co-occur uniformly.

Test-retest reliability assessments conducted across 4- to 8-week intervals indicate high temporal stability for the structural traits, with stability coefficients generally exceeding r = .75 for Habit, Ritual, and Compassionate Petition, confirming that the scale assesses sustained individual patterns of prayer rather than momentary emotional states.

Factor Analysis

The psychometric structure of the SPS was established via exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and subsequent confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) during its initial development and subsequent replications (Luckow et al., 1997; Ladd & Spilka, 2002):

Exploratory Factor Structure

Initial item pools capturing over 60 behavioral, liturgical, and emotional manifestations of prayer were subjected to Principal Axis Factoring (PAF) and Principal Component Analysis (PCA) with both orthogonal (Varimax) and oblique (Promax) rotations. Oblique rotation was prioritized theoretically, as dimensions of prayer are naturally interrelated components of an overarching religious lifestyle.

Factor retention based on the Kaiser criterion (eigenvalues > 1.0) and scree plot inspection confirmed a stable six-factor solution accounting for approximately 52% to 61% of total item variance across validation cohorts. Primary item loadings on target factors ranged from .45 to .84, with minimal secondary cross-loadings (< .30).

Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) Fit Indices

Confirmatory investigations testing the 6-factor oblique model have confirmed superior fit compared to alternative 1-factor or 3-factor nested models. Typical reported fit metrics in representative validation studies (e.g., de la Mora, 2004; Ladd & Spilka, 2002) include:

• Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA): Values typically range from .052 to .068 (90% CI [.046, .074]), indicating acceptable to good approximate fit.
• Comparative Fit Index (CFI): Ranging from .90 to .94, meeting standard psychometric thresholds for complex multidimensional psychological constructs.
• Standardized Root Mean Square Residual (SRMR): Observed values consistently remain below .065.
• Inter-Factor Correlations: Factors show meaningful inter-correlations. For example, Habit correlates moderately with Ritual (r ≈ .45 to .55), and Meditation-Improvement correlates strongly with Compassionate Petition (r ≈ .50 to .65). However, latent correlations remain sufficiently below the .85 threshold, demonstrating discriminant validity between dimensions.

Instrument / Measurement Tool

The Structure of Prayer Scale is a self-administered, 28-item psychometric questionnaire. The test details and scoring architecture are summarized below:

• Test Format: Self-report rating inventory, paper-and-pencil or computerized delivery.
• Item Count: 28 declarative statements.
• Response Scale: 6-point Likert scale (1 = strongly disagree, 2 = moderately disagree, 3 = slightly disagree, 4 = slightly agree, 5 = moderately agree, 6 = strongly agree).
• Administration Time: Approximately 5 to 10 minutes.
• Target Population: Adolescents and adults (ages 16+) who engage in some degree of prayer or spiritual practice, across diverse theological backgrounds.
• Subscale Item Composition:
  • Confession (5 items): Items 3, 4, 7, 14, 17
  • Petition (3 items): Items 13, 15, 22
  • Ritual (3 items): Items 1, 9, 20
  • Meditation-Improvement (5 items): Items 2, 16, 23, 26, 27
  • Habit (4 items): Items 10, 12, 25, 28
  • Compassionate Petition (8 items): Items 5, 6, 8, 11, 18, 19, 21, 24
• Scoring Procedures: All 28 items are positively keyed (no reverse scoring is necessary). Subscale scores are calculated by summing or averaging the items within each subscale: higher scores reflect greater reliance on that specific prayer modality. Individual subscale averages (ranging from 1.0 to 6.0) allow for direct profile comparison across the six dimensions. Computing a single global composite score is generally discouraged, as doing so masks the divergent psychological functions of the distinct prayer types.

Permissions & Fee and Test Year

The Structure of Prayer Scale was published in 1997 in the reference volume Measures of Religiosity, edited by Peter C. Hill and Ralph W. Hood Jr. (pp. 70–72; Religious Education Press). The scale was developed for open empirical inquiry in non-commercial academic, clinical, and scientific research.

• Copyright & Usage: The scale items and scoring structure are accessible in the public academic domain for non-commercial educational and psychological research purposes without licensing fees, provided proper bibliographic attribution is given to Luckow et al. (1997) and Hill & Hood (1999).
• Commercial Applications: Any commercial deployment, proprietary software integration, or profit-generating clinical battery application requires explicit written permission from the copyright holders or primary instrument developers.

References

• de la Mora, A. M. (2004). The God factor: The role of religious involvement on depression, health, and well-being (Publication No. 770) [Doctoral dissertation, Iowa State University]. Iowa State University Retrospective Theses and Dissertations. https://lib.dr.iastate.edu/rtd/770/
• Hill, P. C., & Hood, R. W. (Eds.). (1999). Measures of religiosity. Religious Education Press.
• Ladd, K. L., & Spilka, B. (2002). Inward, outward, upward prayer: Scale development and validation. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 41(3), 475–484. https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-5906.00131
• Ladd, K. L., & Spilka, B. (2006). Inward, outward, and upward prayer: Cognitive aspects of private prayer. In P. McNamara (Ed.), Where God and science meet: How brain and evolutionary studies alter our understanding of religion (Vol. 3, pp. 135–154). Praeger/Greenwood.
• Luckow, A., Ladd, K. L., Spilka, B., McIntosh, D. N., Parks, C., & Laforett, D. (1997). The structure of prayer. In P. C. Hill & R. W. Hood (Eds.), Measures of religiosity (pp. 70–72). Religious Education Press.
• Poloma, M. M., & Gallup, G. H., Jr. (1991). Varieties of prayer: A survey of report. Trinity Press International.
• Poloma, M. M., & Pendleton, B. F. (1989). Exploring types of prayer and quality of life: A research note. Review of Religious Research, 31(1), 46–53. https://doi.org/10.2307/3511023
• Rothbaum, F., Weisz, J. R., & Snyder, S. S. (1982). Changing the world and changing the self: A two-process model of perceived control. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 42(1), 5–37. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.42.1.5
• Spilka, B., Shaver, P., & Kirkpatrick, L. A. (1985). A general attribution theory for the psychology of religion. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 24(1), 1–20. https://doi.org/10.2307/1386272
• Vasiliauskas, S. L. (2010). The effects of a prayer intervention on the process of forgiveness (Doctoral dissertation, George Fox University). Digital Commons @ George Fox University. https://digitalcommons.georgefox.edu/psyd/1092/

13. Items of the Scale (Questionnaire)