Title:
Predictive role of personality, spirituality, religious and secular coping on adaptation to stress associated with divorce
Author:
Thomas K. Swisher
Thesis Advisor:
Ralph L. Piedmont
Committee Member:
Robert J. Wicks
Committee Member:
C. Kevin Gillespie
Committee Member:
Geraldine Fialkowski
Committee Member:
James Buckley
Committee Member:
Martin Sherman
Degree Granting Institution:
Loyola University Maryland--College of Arts and Sciences
Place:
Baltimore (Md.)
Publisher:
Loyola University Maryland
Date Created:
2008
Type of Resource:
text
Genre:
thesis
Language:
eng
Format:
application/pdf
Physical Form:
electronic
Digital Source:
reformatted digital
Abstract:
Divorce is considered one of the most stressful events an individual can experience. This study evaluated the roles of personality, spirituality, religiosity, and religious and secular coping on adaptation to stress. Using scores from instruments measuring the above referenced domains from participants who had recently experienced a separation or divorce (N= 509), this study demonstrated that personality traits from the Five Factor Model of Personality related to adaptation to stress in predictable ways. Individuals who were low on neuroticism, high on extraversion, and high on conscientiousness had better adaptation to stress than those with an apposite pattern. Further analysis through multiple regression demonstrated that spirituality, religiosity, religious coping, and secular coping added to the variance in adaptation to stress over that which was added by personality. Path analysis and structural equation modeling demonstrated that, in this data set, the genotypic domains of personality and spirituality produced direct effects on adaptation to stress and that coping was a significant predictor of adaptation to stress. Three proposed path models were examined. Model 1 postulated that religious and secular coping mediated the effects of the personality and numinous domains on adaptation to stress. Model 2 included both indirect and direct effects of the personality and numinous domains on adaptation to stress. Model 3 included only the direct effects of the personality and numinous domains on adaptation to stress and omitted the coping constructs. Model 1, the Mediation Model, was invalidated by a demonstrated significant Model 2. Model 2, the Complete Direct Effects Model, explained more variance in adaptation to stress than either Model 1 or Model 3, but contained the most number of predictors. Structural equation modeling was conducted to determine which of the models produced the best fit, accounting for parsimony, efficiency, and overall strength of predictors. Model 3, the Reduced Direct Effects Model, produced the best fitting indices in the structural equation analyses. The increase in predictive power provided by adding measures of coping (Model 2) was not enough to justify the increase in the number of extra parameters. The fundamental genotypic dimensions of personality and spirituality provided the most direct and efficient contributions to adaptation (Model 3). Spirituality accounted for variation in adaptation to stress even after the Five Factor Model of Personality domain scores and the scores on both religious and secular coping were added to the multiple regression equation. In particular, Prayer Fulfillment was the major predictor among the spirituality domains of adaptation to stress. The results suggest that creating a positive space in one's life and trying to fill this space with a transcendent reality or being of one's understanding was an important aspect of adaptation to stress in the sample studied.
Subject:
Stress (Psychology)
Subject:
Stress tolerance(Psychology)
Subject:
Divorce--Psychological aspects--
Subject:
Divorce--Religious aspects--
Subject:
Five-Factor Nonverbal Personality Questionnaire
Degree:
Doctor of Philosophy
Level:
Doctoral
Discipline:
Pastoral Counseling
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Identifier:
SwisherTK-08
