This study sampled children and youth in Zambia to evaluate relations between well-being, spirituality and religiousness. Spirituality was defined to the participants as feeling aware of, or connected to, something or someone greater than oneself and focused particularly on the nature domain of spirituality. Religiousness was defined as institutional religious rituals, practices, and beliefs.
A total of 391 children (age 7 – 12) and 902 youth (age 13-19) participated in this study. They completed a written survey in their classrooms, with six different schools participating. Five of the schools were in urban environments; one in a rural area. All but one of the schools served children from low socio-economic backgrounds, with large numbers living in extreme poverty.
The survey included assessments of happiness, life satisfaction, religiosity, and spirituality. Scales used for measuring happiness and life satisfaction included the Faces Scale, the Subjective Happiness Scale, and the Student Life Satisfaction Scale. Religiosity was measured by asking the participants to indicate how frequently they attended church and how important religion was in their life. Spirituality was assessed by asking participants if they considered themselves to be a spiritual person. They were also asked to respond to three statements relating to the nature domain of spirituality: ''I feel connected to nature;'' ''I feel connected to plants and animals around me;'' and ''I enjoy being outdoors and outside.” The researchers included the nature domain of spirituality (rather than the other domains relating to personal meaning, communal relations and transcendence) as they considered nature-based interventions would be relatively easy to develop and could potentially enhance children's happiness and life satisfaction.
Results indicate that spirituality is a strong predictor of children's life satisfaction and a moderate predictor of adolescents' happiness and life satisfaction. Age, gender, school grade, and religiosity were not strong predictors of happiness and life satisfaction, especially for children. Overall, these results are consistent with previous research showing that spirituality, but not necessarily religiosity, is associated with children's and adolescents' well-being.
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