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Frontiers in Psychology | www.frontiersin.org 1 March 2022 | Volume 13 | Article 742265
ORIGINAL RESEARCH
published: 31 March 2022
doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.742265
Edited by:
Daniela Popa,
Transilvania University of Brasov,
Romania
Reviewed by:
Paul T. P. Wong,
Trent University, Canada
Marcelo Saad,
Albert Einstein Israelite Hospital,
Brazil
*Correspondence:
Sarah A. Schnitker
sarah_schnitker@baylor.edu
Specialty section:
This article was submitted to
Educational Psychology,
a section of the journal
Frontiers in Psychology
Received: 15 July 2021
Accepted: 03 March 2022
Published: 31 March 2022
Citation:
Gilbertson MK, Brady ST, Ablorh T,
Logel C and Schnitker SA (2022)
Closeness to God, Spiritual
Struggles, and Wellbeing in the First
Year of College.
Front. Psychol. 13:742265.
doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.742265
Closeness to God, Spiritual
Struggles, and Wellbeing in the First
Year of College
MadisonKawakamiGilbertson
1, ShannonT.Brady
2, TsotsoAblorh
3, ChristineLogel
4 and
Sarah A.Schnitker
5*
1 School of Psychology, Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, CA, United States, 2 Department of Psychology, Wake Forest
University, Winston-Salem, NC, United States, 3 Department of Clinical Psychology, University of Massachusetts Boston,
Boston, MA, United States, 4 Department of Social Development Studies, Renison University College, University of Waterloo,
Waterloo, ON, Canada, 5 Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, Baylor University, Waco, TX, United States
Spirituality is an important, but oft-overlooked, aspect of the self that may affect college
students’ wellbeing and belonging. Few studies have systematically examined closeness
to God and spiritual struggles as predictors of college student wellbeing during early
college, which is a critical window for identity development. Moreover, research exploring
interactions between spiritual struggles and closeness to God in predicting wellbeing
outcomes is scarce. Weaddress these gaps in the literature with an analytic sample
comprised of 839 rst-year college participants who identify as religious. The results of
correlational analyses and linear mixed effect models are presented. Closeness to God
was associated with greater wellbeing and belonging, and spiritual struggles were
associated with lower wellbeing and belonging. In exploratory analyses, a moderating
effect of closeness to God on the relation between spiritual struggles and negative
outcomes was observed. Implications for higher education and college student
development are discussed.
Keywords: closeness to God, spiritual struggles, spirituality, wellbeing, belonging, college
INTRODUCTION
In college, students must nd their place within a new physical, social, and academic context.
A growing body of research nds that students’ social identities (Tajfel and Turner, 1979),
and psychological factors associated with those identities, can consequentially shape students’
wellbeing and belonging early in college and beyond (Walton and Cohen, 2007, 2011; Strayhorn,
2012; Brady et al., 2020). Most research on how social identities inuence students’ outcomes
during college has focused on racial/ethnic background, gender, or rst-generation college
status (Walton and Cohen, 2011; Stephens et al., 2012; Walton et al., 2015; Yeager et al.,
2016). Other aspects of students’ identities merit further inquiry. Here, we focus on spiritual
identity, specically students’ sense of their closeness to God and the extent to which they
struggle spiritually. We examine how these spiritual factors are associated with other important
early college outcomes: wellbeing and belonging.
Frontiers in Psychology | www.frontiersin.org 2 March 2022 | Volume 13 | Article 742265
Gilbertson et al. Spirituality in the First Year of College
Religion and Spirituality in College
Even though spiritual identity is of central importance to
human development (Barry and Abo-Zena, 2014), it is oen
ignored by researchers (Astin, 2004). is oversight is glaring,
as approximately 71% of UnitedStates college students identify
as part of a religion (Eagan et al., 2015). Although the level
of students’ religious activity—such as attending church
services—oen declines during college (Astin et al., 2011a,b;
Barry and Abo-Zena, 2014), the importance of their religious
and spiritual beliefs remain stable (Hunsberger, 1978; Bryant
et al., 2003; Koenig et al., 2008). Moreover, young adults
may become more open to spiritual searching and religious
diversity (Small and Bowman, 2012). Arnett (2014) noted
that emerging young adults seek meaning as they develop
their identity, and many look to religious/spiritual sources
to construct a meaning system.
As with other social identities, spiritual identity can aect
people’s everyday experiences. For example, researchers have
found that spiritual factors may not only act as psychological
buers for young adults in the face of stress (Bryant et al.,
2003; Yonker et al., 2012) but may also serve as sources of
distress that could negatively aect their college outcomes
(Exline and Rose, 2005; Exline, 2013; Wilt et al., 2017). In
non-college samples, spiritual factors have been linked to
important outcomes, like wellbeing (Koenig etal., 2012; Barry
and Abo-Zena, 2014).
Most existing research has focused on spiritual identity
development during adolescence and emerging adulthood
(MacDonald, 2011; Roehlkepartain et al., 2011) or the eects
of religious aliation on wellbeing (Schwab and Petersen, 1990;
Tix and Frazier, 2005; Green and Elliott, 2010; Mochon et al.,
2011; Small and Bowman, 2012). However, more studies are
needed that examine specic religious and spiritual factors
related to identity that are of particular importance for
determining the negative or positive eects of religion and
spirituality on wellbeing (Hardy etal., 2019). is is the approach
we adopt in the present study.
Two variables in the literature related to spiritual identity
that, to our knowledge, have not been studied together in
college populations are closeness to God and spiritual struggles.
Especially early in college, religion and spirituality may serve
as a helpful coping resource that alleviates stress in the new
collegiate environment through a sense of closeness to God
(e.g., a close relationship with God may buer against stress
about making new friends in college; Laurin etal., 2014; Jeppsen
etal., 2015), or as a source of stress related to spiritual struggles
(e.g., a rst-year student has her beliefs challenged and struggles
with doubt; Bryant and Astin, 2008).
Closeness to God
Hill and Pargament (2003) dene closeness to God as an
individual’s “felt close relationship with the divine” (p.67). In
many religious traditions, developing a close relationship with
God is a key aspect of spiritual development (Kass etal., 1991;
Hill and Pargament, 2003), and models of relational spirituality
maintain that the quality of personal relationships with the
divine is a central factor of many predominant monotheistic
religions (e.g., Davis etal., 2018; Verhagen and Schreurs, 2018).
e literature on closeness to God draws from theory on
religious coping and attachment. People who report a secure
attachment to God—that is, they have a close relationship
with God as an attachment gure and view God as a secure
base—are more likely to report better health (Krause, 1998)
and better psychosocial adjustment. is is especially true in
the face of major stressors like health issues (Koenig et al.,
1998; Tix and Frazier, 1998) or crisis situations (Smith et al.,
2000). Early ndings have been replicated in the past two
decades; a recent meta-analysis of 123 studies found that a
secure attachment to God was positively associated with a
variety of outcomes related to wellbeing, self-concept, and
positive relationships among theistic participants (Stulp
et al., 2019).
e transition to college is a major stressor for many
students—one that can last their entire rst year of college
or longer (Misra and McKean, 2000; Conley etal., 2014, 2020).
Drawing on the existing literature, we expect that students’
closeness to God may aect how students respond to stressors
like a tense roommate relationship, an overwhelming workload,
or challenges to their faith, and thus will be associated with
their wellbeing at the end of their rst year of college.
Spiritual Struggles
Although spiritual struggles can be dened in dierent ways,
we use the denition proposed by Exline et al. (2014) who
dene it as negative thoughts or conict associated with some
aspect of spirituality (e.g., beliefs, practices, experiences). Spiritual
struggles can involve struggles with supernatural agents (deities
or demons), struggles with other people or with institutions
over religious or spiritual matters, or struggles within oneself
regarding morality, doubt, or ultimate meaning in life.
In most studies, spiritual struggles are negatively associated
with wellbeing and positively associated with psychological
distress, including anxiety, depression, negative outlooks on
life, suicidality, and negative outcomes in stressful situations
(Pargament et al., 1998; Exline et al., 2000, 2014; Ano and
Vasconcelles, 2005; Exline and Rose, 2005; McConnell et al.,
2006; Bryant and Astin, 2008; Exline, 2013; Wilt et al., 2017).
In a meta-analysis of 32 studies examining the links between
spiritual struggles and psychological adjustment across time
(Bockrath et al., 2021), a small signicant meta-analytic eect
for negative psychological adjustment (e.g., depression symptoms,
anxiety symptoms, PTSD symptoms) suggests spiritual struggles
predict exacerbation of mental illness symptoms and other
indicators of poor adjustment. In contrast, there was no
signicant meta-analytic eect for indicators of positive
psychological adjustment (e.g., life satisfaction, optimism,
self-esteem).
Spiritual struggles are common in college as students
re-examine their religious and spiritual beliefs outside of their
familial and community contexts (Barry and Abo-Zena, 2014).
For example, students may have trouble integrating new
knowledge from their academic courses with their faith tradition.
Students of dierent faith traditions may clash on campus.
Gilbertson et al. Spirituality in the First Year of College
Frontiers in Psychology | www.frontiersin.org 3 March 2022 | Volume 13 | Article 742265
Or, students may nd themselves at odds with other believers
within their faith tradition if their spiritual struggles put them
at odds with other believers or if the faith community
environment discourages discussion of existential questions,
ultimate meaning, and doubt (Bryant and Astin, 2008).
It is important to note that spiritual struggles are not always
detrimental. Rather, in some cases, spiritual struggles can
promote wellbeing through their eect on meaning making,
spiritual growth, and experiences of sacredness (Wilt et al.,
2019; Zarzycka and Zietek, 2019; Zarzycka and Puchalska-
Wasyl, 2020). Some scholars, including Wong (2019, 2020),
have argued that struggling and ourishing are interdependent
and that ourishing requires struggle. However, greater
investigation is needed of the conditions under which this
will occur or the factors that might buer or exacerbate the
eects of religious struggles on psychological distress. For
example, Trevino et al. (2019) found that certain spiritual
(insecure God attachment), social (social isolation), emotional
(anger, death anxiety), and behavioral (smoking) burdens
magnied the association between stressful life events and
spiritual struggles; in contrast, spiritual (religious hope), social
(emotional support), and cognitive (self-esteem, optimism)
resources did not buer eects. Additionally, Dworsky et al.
(2016) found that, in addition to increased distress and negative
psychological outcomes of spiritual struggles themselves,
avoidance of spiritual struggles was associated with a multitude
of mental health and emotional regulation diculties. Together,
these ndings demonstrate the importance of evaluating potential
moderators of spiritual struggles.
The Relationship Between Spiritual
Struggles and Closeness to God
Closeness to God and spiritual struggles generally have opposite
associations with wellbeing, but the two are not necessarily
orthogonal. It seems quite possible that a person could both
feel quite close to God and bestruggling spiritually at the same
time. Just as closeness and perceived partner understanding
buers against deleterious eects of conict in human relationships
(Gordon and Chen, 2016), it may be that closeness to God
buers against the negative eects of spiritual struggles on
wellbeing. Trevino et al. (2019) found that the related concept
of insecure attachment to God exacerbated the eects of stressful
life events on spiritual struggles, and previous research suggests
other aspects of religiosity (i.e., religious commitment, life
sanctication, religious support, religious hope) buer the links
between spiritual struggles and two outcomes: happiness and
depressive symptoms (Abu-Raiya et al., 2016). However, such
buering eects have not been tested for closeness to God nor
have eects been tested among a wide range of outcomes.
To date, the literature on closeness to God and spiritual
struggles have largely examined these two factors separately.
e few studies that do assess them both oen do not examine
or fully discuss the relationships between them. For example,
Exline etal. (2000) found spiritual struggles positively predicted
depressive symptoms and suicidality in college undergraduates
even aer controlling for religiosity and for religious comfort
(a variable which shares some similarities to closeness to God);
however, they did not report whether religious comfort was
still a signicant predictor aer controlling for struggles. Likewise,
Harris et al. (2014) examined the eects of both spiritual
struggles and religious comfort on trauma symptoms, but they
did not run a model including both as simultaneous predictors.
In a later study, they found that religious comfort and particular
types of spiritual struggles simultaneously predicted with
postconventional religiousness, a mature religiousness
characterized by a commitment to faith aer addressing challenges
and doubt (Harris etal., 2015). However, they did not report
whether comfort and struggle both predicted wellbeing nor
did they examine interactions between them.
With regard specically to wellbeing, Abernethy etal. (2020)
found that among inpatient psychiatric patients, religious comfort
and spiritual struggles, as assessed by the Religious Comfort
and Strain Scale (Exline et al., 2000, 2014), were moderately
negatively correlated with each other and depressive symptoms,
but only religious comfort predicted changes in depression
from intake to discharge. Similarly, Abu-Raiya et al. (2015a,b)
tested whether closeness to God predicted spiritual struggles
in a sample of Israeli–Palestinian Muslim college students.
Although the correlational analyses from this study revealed
a signicant, negative association between closeness to God
and spiritual struggles (i.e., greater closeness to God was
associated with less spiritual struggles), researchers found that
closeness to God did not predict any type of spiritual struggles
when they conducted hierarchical regression analyses controlling
for God image, fundamentalism, and universality. Both closeness
to God and spiritual struggles were simultaneous predictors
of life satisfaction, but only spiritual struggles predicted depressive
and anxiety symptoms. Moreover, they did not test for any
interaction eects. us, examination of closeness to God,
spiritual struggles, and their interaction in a large sample of
diverse undergrads across the United States is needed.
Spirituality and Belonging in College
Given our interest in college students, we expanded our focus
on wellbeing to consider students’ belonging on campus. A person’s
sense of belonging is the extent to which they feel comfortable,
valued, and a part of a particular environment (sometimes called
belongingness; Osterman, 2000; Walton and Brady, 2017). Past
research has argued that belonging is not merely benecial but,
rather, a fundamental human need (Baumeister and Leary, 1995).
A related, but distinct, construct is belonging uncertainty (Walton
and Cohen, 2007). is is the extent to which a person is
uncertain or unsettled about their belonging. Belonging uncertainty
diers from belonging in that it captures the extent of a person’s
worry about whether they belong rather than their level of
belonging (Walton and Brady, 2017). Understanding how spiritual
factors relate to belonging is critical because students’ perceptions
and experiences of belonging early in college can aect their
academic outcomes and wellbeing for years (Walton and Cohen,
2011; Brady et al., 2020).
A person’s sense of belonging is shaped by an understanding
of their own social identity and how that identity “ts”—or
does not—in their present context. For example, past studies
Gilbertson et al. Spirituality in the First Year of College
Frontiers in Psychology | www.frontiersin.org 4 March 2022 | Volume 13 | Article 742265
demonstrate that a students’ gender, ethnicity, and status as a
rst-generation college student can aect how they perceive
their environments and the extent to which they feel like they
belong (Walton and Cohen, 2011; Stephens etal., 2014; Walton
et al., 2015). To the extent that spirituality is an important
aspect of identity, weexpect that it, too, would aect students’
sense of belonging at college. However, little is known about
the associations between spiritual variables and college students’
feelings of belonging.
We hypothesize that both closeness to God and spiritual
struggles will be associated with belonging. A student who
feels close to God may experience that relationship as a secure
base from which to form attachments to other people on
campus. ey may have an easier time connecting with their
faith community. e security they feel in their relationship
with God may temper their concerns about belonging on
campus. In contrast, a student who is struggling spiritually
may have a hard time feeling connected and valued by others
on campus. Spiritual struggles may not only lower their sense
of belonging but also unsettle it. Relatedly, the feelings of
anxiety or depression that can be brought on by spiritual
struggles may make it more dicult to engage with others
and foster a sense of belonging within a new community. No
study, to our knowledge, has yet explored these important
questions connecting belonging to aspects of spiritual identity.
Hypotheses
e manuscript examines two key aspects of spirituality—
closeness to God and spiritual struggles—of rst-year college
students across six dierent campuses in the United States.
Our preregistered analyses, which are “underutilized in the
psychology of religion/spirituality eld,”1 examine the associations
between these two factors and various indices of wellbeing.
Wehypothesize that students’ closeness to God will bepositively
related to better wellbeing, mental health, physical health, and
college belonging and that spiritual struggles will be negatively
associated with these same outcomes when simultaneously
entered as predictors, even aer accounting for demographic
variables. See Table 1 for specic predictions related to each
study variable and the literature related to those predictions.
To complement general wellbeing measures, we assess an
important college-specic indicator of wellbeing: students’ sense
of belonging in college, to complement general wellbeing
measures. We also examine interactions between closeness to
God and spiritual struggles, exploring the possibility that
closeness to God may be a protective factor that moderates
the relation between spiritual struggles and negative outcomes.
MATERIALS AND METHODS
Study Context
e data for this study were collected as part of a large research
project conducted at more than 20 colleges and universities in
the United States and Canada during academic years 2015–2016
and 2016–2017 (Blodorn et al., 2018). e primary purpose of
the project was to conduct a randomized controlled trial of a
social-belonging intervention (Walton and Cohen, 2011; Walton
et al., 2021, unpublished),2 which used stories and a written
1
https://www.openscienceofreligion.com/call-for-proposals
2
Walton, G. M., Murphy, M. C., Logel, C., Yeager, D., and e College Transition
Collaborative (2021). Where and with whom does a brief social-belonging intervention
raise college achievement? [Unpublished manuscript]. e CTC Belonging Trial.
TABLE1 | Hypotheses based on previous literature at time of preregistration.
Key variables Reference studies
Hypothesized
association for
closeness to God
Reference studies
Hypothesized
association for
spiritual struggles
Life Satisfaction Poloma and Pendleton, 1990†Positive Ellison, 1991; Ellison and Lee, 2010; Abu-Raiya etal.,
2015a,b†
Negative
Happiness Poloma and Pendleton, 1990†Positive Ellison, 1991; Ellison and Lee, 2010; Abu-Raiya etal.,
2015a,b†
Negative
Meaning in Life Poloma and Pendleton, 1990†Positive Exline and Rose, 2005; Park, 2005; Exline, 2013 Negative
Anxiety Rowatt and Kirkpatrick, 2002;
Boelens etal., 2012
Negative Ano and Vasconcelles, 2005†; McConnell etal.,
2006†; Abernethy etal., 2020
Positive
Depression Maton, 1989; Exline etal., 2000†;
Abernethy etal., 2020
Negative Exline etal., 2000†; Ano and Vasconcelles, 2005†;
McConnell etal., 2006†
Positive
Loneliness Kirkpatrick etal., 1999†Negative Exline, 2013; McConnell etal., 2006 Positive
General Mental
Health
Krause, 1998; Hill and Pargament, 2003 Positive Ano and Vasconcelles, 2005; McConnell etal., 2006 Negative
Primary Stress
Appraisal
Koenig etal., 1998; Tix and Frazier, 1998;
Smith etal., 2000; Hill and Pargament, 2003
Negative Exline etal., 2000; Pearce etal., 2006; Herrera etal.,
2009
Positive
Secondary Stress
Appraisal
Kirkpatrick, 1995; Hill and Pargament, 2003 Positive Pearce etal., 2006; Herrera etal., 2009 Negative
Physical Health Krause, 1998; Hill and Pargament, 2003 Positive Koenig etal., 1998†Negative
Belonging Poloma and Pendleton, 1990; Osterman,
2000; Hill and Pargament, 2003
Positive Osterman, 2000; Exline and Rose, 2005; Bryant and
Astin, 2008
Negative
Belonging
Uncertainty
Poloma and Pendleton, 1990; Osterman,
2000; Hill and Pargament, 2003
Negative Walton and Cohen, 2007 Positive
†A study that directly examined correlations between spiritual struggles and the variable of interest. For all other studies, the hypothesized results were based on extrapolation and theory.
Gilbertson et al. Spirituality in the First Year of College
Frontiers in Psychology | www.frontiersin.org 5 March 2022 | Volume 13 | Article 742265
response to convey that challenges in the transition to college
are normative and not a sign of non-belonging. However, the
project also provided the opportunity to collect data for additional
investigations, of which the present study was the only one focused
on spirituality (for other manuscripts that use data from the
larger project, see Carter etal., 2019; Holmes etal., 2019; LaCosse
et al., 2020; Logel et al., 2020). We collected the data for the
present study as part of a survey during the spring semesters of
students’ rst year (i.e., spring semester 2016 and 2017). e
questions about closeness to God and spiritual struggles were
collected at six institutions in the US (four non-sectarian private
liberal arts colleges in the Midwest, one religiously aliated liberal
arts college in the Midwest, and one public university in the
South). A technical summary of the larger project is available in
the Supplementary Material. e Supplementary Material also
includes information about sample size determination, all data
exclusions, all manipulations, and all measures in the study. All
participants were consented per Institutional Review Board
approved procedures.
Participants
In total, 1,190 college students from the six schools responded
to the questions for the present study. Because our focus was
on closeness to God, a scale that requires some degree of
relationship to a deity or higher power of some kind, weretained
only those respondents who reported an aliation with a
religious or spiritual group and who noted a belief in God,
gods, or a higher power. Oviedo (2019) argues that religious
meaning may operate dierently for people who view it as a
more central component of identity such that it “is not a kind
of ‘universal pattern,’ but a variable that registers dierent levels
of intensity and inuence among a broad sample of population”
(p.38). Given this, we examine these associations only among
students who self-identify as spiritual and/or belonging to a
religious group. Although some students who identify as Agnostic,
Atheist, or not Spiritual or Religious may have spiritual struggles
(Exline et al., 2014) or other experiences of transcendence
(Callaway etal., 2020), it is likely that their spiritual experiences
are qualitatively distinct from those who identify as spiritual
and/or religious and are therefore beyond the scope of this study.
e resulting analytic sample included 839 students, although
not all students had data for every variable. Hereaer, werefer
only to the students who were included in the analytic sample.
Most of the students (n = 762) were Christian, including those
who identied as Protestant (59%), Catholic (29%), Christian
Orthodox (2%), Mormon (<1%), and Jehovah’s Witness (<1%).
Non-Christian students (n = 77) composed the remainder of
the sample, including students who identied as Spiritual but
not Religious (5%), Jewish (1%), Muslim (1%), Buddhist (1%),
Hindu (<1%), Unitarian (<1%), Baha’i (<1%), Taoist (<1%),
and Wiccan (<1%).
Overall, 63% of students were women, 37% of students
were men, and less than 1% identied in another way regarding
gender. Regarding race/ethnicity, the majority of students
identied as White (72%), and a minority identied as Black
(10%), Latino (7%), Asian (3%), Multiracial (4%), Native
American (<1%), Other (3%), or did not provide a response
(<1%). Twenty-seven percent were rst-generation college
students (i.e., no parent/guardian had earned a four-year college
degree). For some analyses, we included indicator variables
for whether a student was from an underrepresented racial/
ethnic background (URM; Native, Black, and Latinx students;
n = 156) and for whether students were a rst-generation college
student (n = 200).
Procedure
As noted above, the questions for the present study were part
of a survey students completed toward the end of their rst
year of college. e survey was administered online. In addition
to the questions discussed here, students answered other questions
about their social and academic experiences at college. Students
received a $5 Amazon.com gi card for completing the
30-min survey.
Due to the risk of losing participants if the survey was overly
long, the research team took a “practical measurement” approach
(Duckworth and Yeager, 2015), assessing each of the constructs
of interest with a brief measure, sometimes as short as a single
question. Single-item measures of psychological variables are a
viable alternative in education settings when testing time is
limited (e.g., they reproduce theoretical underpinnings of long-
form scales, correlate adequately with long-form scales; Gogol
et al., 2014). Likewise, single-item measures of religiosity have
been found to have adequate reliability and validity in student
samples (Dollinger and Malmquist, 2009). Due to data use
agreements with participating schools, the data cannot be made
available in a public repository. However, data can be accessed
by contacting the College Transition Collaborative (contact@
ctcteam.org) and signing a data use agreement.
Measures
Spiritual Variables
Closeness to God
Students reported their perceived closeness to a higher power
ranging from 1 (not at all) to 5 (extremely close3) on an item
adapted from the Daily Spiritual Experiences Scale (Underwood
and Teresi, 2002): “Over the past month of school, how close
have you felt to God, gods, or a higher power?”
Spiritual Struggles
Students reported the extent to which they recently have
experienced spiritual struggles on one item adapted from the
Religious and Spiritual Struggles Scale (Exline et al., 2014):
“In the past month of school, how oen have youhad struggles
related to religion or spirituality? Struggles can include feelings
of confusion or doubt about your religious/spiritual beliefs;
feeling as though your life had no deeper meaning; conicts
with other people about religious/spiritual matters or feeling
hurt/mistreated by religious people; or feeling attacked by evil
force” (scale: 1 = never/not at all to 5 = very oen).
3
Students also had the option to select “0= N/A; I do not believe in a higher
power.” As noted above, these students have been excluded from the present sample.
Gilbertson et al. Spirituality in the First Year of College
Frontiers in Psychology | www.frontiersin.org 6 March 2022 | Volume 13 | Article 742265
Wellbeing
Happiness
Students answered two questions from the Subjective Happiness
Scale (Lyubomirsky and Lepper, 1999): “Compared with most
of my peers, I consider myself …” (scale: 1 = less happy to
7 = more happy) and “In general, I consider myself …” (scale:
1 = not a very happy person to 7 = a very happy person scale).
Life Satisfaction
Students answered one question about life satisfaction (adapted
from Andrews and McKennell, 1980): “All things considered,
how satised are youwith your life as a whole?” (scale: 1 = totally
dissatisfied to 10 = totally satisfied).
Meaning in Life
Students answered one question about the extent to which
they felt their life had meaning (adapted from Fredrickson
et al., 2013): “Right now, how much do you feel that your
life at [school name] has a sense of direction or meaning to
it?” (scale: 1 = not at all to 5 = a great deal).
Mental Health
Anxiety
Students completed a two-question screener for anxiety (the
GAD-2; Kroenke et al., 2009): “Over the last 2 weeks, how
oen have youbeen bothered by the following problems? (1)
Not being able to stop or control worrying, (2) Feeling nervous,
anxious, or on edge” (scale: 1 = not at all to 4 = nearly every day).
Depression
Students completed a two-question screener for depression (the
PHQ-2; Kroenke et al., 2009): “Over the last 2 weeks, how
oen have youbeen bothered by the following problems? (1)
Feeling down, depressed, or hopeless, (2) Little interest or
pleasure in doing things” (scale: 1 = not at all to 4 = nearly
every day).
Loneliness
Students answered two questions from the ree-Item Loneliness
Scale (Hughes et al., 2004): “At [school name], how oen do
you feel isolated from others?” and “At [school name], how
oen do youfeel that youlack companionship?” (scale: 1 = hardly
ever to 3 = oen).
General Mental Health
Students answered one question about their general mental
health (adapted from a similar item about physical health,
Ware and Sherbourne, 1992): “In general, how has your mental
health been this past academic year?” (scale: 1 = poor to
5 = excellent).
Stress and Physical Health
Primary Appraisal of Stress
Students answered one question about how much stress they
experience at college (modeled aer Lazarus, 1991): “How
much stress do youexperience on a day-to-day basis at [school
name]?” (scale: 1 = none to 7 = an extreme amount).
Secondary Appraisal of Stress
Students answered one question about how equipped they feel
to cope with daily stress (modeled aer Lazarus, 1991): “How
condent do you feel that you can handle the stress
youexperience on a day-to-day basis at [school name]?” (scale:
1 = not at all confident to 7 = extremely confident).
Physical Health
Students answered one question about their physical health
(Ware and Sherbourne, 1992): “In general, how has your physical
health been this past academic year?” (scale: 1 = poor to
5 = excellent).
Belonging at College
Belonging
Students answered four questions about belonging in college
(Walton and Cohen, 2007; for example, “I feel like I belong
at [school name]”; scale: 1 = strongly disagree to 6 = strongly agree).
Belonging Uncertainty
Students answered one question about the extent to which
they feel uncertain about their belonging at college (Yeager
et al., 2013): “When you think about [school name], how
oen, if ever, do you wonder: ‘Maybe I do not belong here’?”
(scale: 1 = never to 5 = always).
Analysis Strategy
Aer calculating correlation coecients and descriptives, weused
R (R Core Team, 2017) and the lme4 package (Bates etal., 2015)
to examine the associations between the spiritual variables (closeness
to God and spiritual struggles) and wellbeing, mental health,
stress and physical health, and belonging variables. Each model
included both of the spiritual variables, in order to assess unique
variance of each in relation to the dependent variables. In each
model, as specied in our preregistration,4 we included gender
(1 = female, 0 = male; three missing) and intervention treatment
as covariates. In addition, we included dummy variables for three
additional demographic variables of interest: Christian aliation
(1 = Christian, 0 = Non-Christian), URM background (1 = Black,
Latinx, and/or Native, 0 = Not Black, Latinx, or Native; one missing),
and rst-generation college (1 = First-generation college, 0 = Not
rst-generation college; 56 missing).5 We also included in each
model a random intercept for school to account for dierences
across institutions. To generate p-values, we used the lmerTest
package (Kuznetsova etal., 2014). Participants were dropped for
4
We pre-registered our hypotheses and primary analyses on AsPredicted.org.
5
We added these additional covariates to our-preregistered analytic models in
response to feedback from colleagues and reviewers. e pre-registered models,
which include both of the spiritual variables as well as controls for treatment
condition and gender, yield largely the same results, as do simpler models
that examine the spiritual variables separately while controlling for treatment
and gender.
Gilbertson et al. Spirituality in the First Year of College
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a particular analysis if they had missing data for any of the
variables in that analysis; that said, all analyses included at least
92% of participants. Wealso conducted exploratory analyses testing
for moderation of closeness to God on spiritual struggle using
the R interactions package for simple slopes analyses (Long, 2019).
RESULTS
Preliminary Analyses
Table 2 provides descriptive statistics and correlations for the
key variables. Although we used a modied, shorter scale to
measure spiritual struggles, participants’ scores were similar
to those observed in other studies (McConnell et al., 2006;
Abu-Raiya et al., 2015a,b). Similarly, closeness to God scores
were similar to those observed in past research (e.g., Underwood
and Teresi, 2002).
ere was meaningful variability in the spiritual variables
across dierent campuses for both closeness to God, F(5,
833) = 14.64, p < 0.001, η2 = 0.08, and spiritual struggles, F(5,
833) = 3.18, p < 0.01, η2 = 0.02. Students at a large public university
in the southeast reported the highest average closeness to God
(M = 3.31, SD = 1.25), whereas students at one of the private
liberal arts colleges reported average closeness to God that
was almost a full point lower (M = 2.38, SD = 1.23). Students
at a faith-based liberal arts college reported the highest average
spiritual struggles (M = 2.67, SD = 1.06), whereas students at a
dierent liberal arts college reported the lowest average spiritual
struggles (M = 2.23, SD = 0.97).
Table 2 presents the zero-order correlations among the key
variables. Of note, the two spiritual variables are signicantly,
but not strongly, negatively correlated (r = −0.15, p < 0.001).
Because closeness to God and spiritual struggles were
hypothesized to predict the same outcomes but in opposite
directions, some degree of negative correlation was expected
between the two variables. However, the small association
suggests that they are not redundant.
Preregistered Analyses
Across all signicant results, eects were small to moderate in size.
Do Closeness to God and Spiritual Struggles
Relate to Wellbeing?
Aer accounting for the covariates, closeness to God was
positively associated with all three indicators of wellbeing:
happiness, life satisfaction, and meaning in life. Spiritual struggles
negatively associated with happiness, life satisfaction, and
meaning in life. In addition, Christian students reported higher
happiness, and URM students reported lower life satisfaction
and meaning in life (see Tab l e 3).
Do Closeness to God and Spiritual Struggles
Relate to Mental Health?
As predicted, closeness to God was negatively associated with
anxiety, depression, and loneliness, and positively associated with
general mental health. e patterns were opposite for spiritual
struggles. Spiritual struggles were positively associated with
anxiety, depression, and loneliness, and negatively associated with
general mental health. In addition, URM students reported greater
depression and loneliness and lower mental health. First-generation
college students reported greater depression (see Tab l e 4).
Do Closeness to God and Spiritual Struggles
Relate to Stress and Physical Health?
Closeness to God and spiritual struggles were associated with
some but not all of the stress and physical health variables.
Specically, closeness to God was associated with two positive
outcomes: secondary stress appraisal (i.e., ability to cope with
stress) and physical health, but not primary stress appraisal.
In contrast, spiritual struggles were associated with only primary
stress appraisal (i.e., how much stress). In addition, women
reported worse physical health, higher primary stress, and lower
secondary stress. URM students reported worse physical health
but lower primary stress (see Tab l e 5 ).
Do Closeness to God and Spiritual Struggles
Relate to Belonging and Belonging Uncertainty?
As predicted, closeness to God was positively associated with
belonging and negatively associated with belonging uncertainty.
In contrast, spiritual struggles were positively associated with
belonging uncertainty, but not signicantly associated with
belonging. URM students reported lower belonging and higher
belonging uncertainty than their peers did. For rst-generation
students, the same pattern was evident, albeit weaker and not
statistically signicant (see Tab l e 6).
Exploratory Analyses: Is Closeness to God
a Protective Factor Between Spiritual
Struggles and Negative Outcomes?
Although closeness to God and spiritual struggles generally
had opposing associations with our outcome variables, their
zero-order correlation was quite small, suggesting the possibility
that they functioned relatively independently. us, on an
exploratory basis, wealso explored whether closeness to God
and spiritual struggles interacted to predict wellbeing outcomes.
In addition to the R analysis packages described above,
we used the interactions package for simple slopes analyses
(Long, 2019).
For most of our outcome variables, we did not observe
signicant interactions between closeness to God and spiritual
struggles. However, there were two exceptions to this: depression
and loneliness (see Tab l e 7). Simple slopes analyses suggested
that closeness to God may buer the association between spiritual
struggles and negative psychological outcomes. As shown in
Table 8, students with high closeness to God (+1 SD), spiritual
struggles were not signicantly correlated with loneliness; in
contrast, for those at or below the mean on closeness to God,
spiritual struggles were signicantly and positively associated with
loneliness. A similar attenuation eect was observed for depression;
even though spiritual struggles and depression were signicantly
Gilbertson et al. Spirituality in the First Year of College
Frontiers in Psychology | www.frontiersin.org 8 March 2022 | Volume 13 | Article 742265
TABLE2 | Zero-order correlations.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
1. Closeness to God –
2. Spiritual Struggles −0.15*** –
3. Happiness 0.26*** −0.20*** –
4. Life Satisfaction 0.26*** −0.20*** 0.64*** –
5. Meaning in Life 0.25*** −0.10*** 0.43*** 0.56*** –
6. Anxiety −0.06*0.16*** −0.32*** −0.34*** −0.23*** –
7. Depression −0.15*** 0.21*** −0.44*** −0.49*** −0.38*** 0.60*** –
8. Loneliness −0.11*** 0.13*** −0.37*** −0.42*** −0.43*** 0.33*** 0.43*** –
9. Mental Health 0.19*** −0.18*** 0.48*** 0.50*** 0.39*** −0.52*** −0.54*** −0.38*** –
10. Primary Stress
Appraisal
−0.05 0.15*** −0.25*** −0.30*** −0.21*** 0.57*** 0.41*** 0.24*** −0.48*** –
11. Secondary Stress
Appraisal
0.20*** −0.11*** 0.39*** 0.46*** 0.36*** −0.46*** −0.41*** −0.27*** 0.52*** −0.40*** –
12. Physical Health 0.18*** −0.14*** 0.26*** 0.30*** 0.21*** −0.25*** −0.25*** −0.20*** 0.48*** −0.26*** 0.33*** –
13. Belonging 0.13*** −0.08** 0.37*** 0.49*** 0.55*** −0.24*** −0.36*** −0.59*** 0.38*** −0.21*** 0.33*** 0.18*** –
14. Belonging
Uncertainty
−0.15*** 0.12*** −0.34*** −0.46*** −0.52*** 0.27*** 0.37*** 0.54*** −0.37*** 0.24*** −0.33*** −0.17*** −0.71*** –
15. Intervention
Treatment
−0.05 0.03 −0.03 −0.01 0.01 −0.02 0.03 −0.00 0.01 −0.01 −0.01 0.02 0.01 0.00 –
Mean 2.89 2.41 5.33 7.35 3.67 2.15 1.72 1.59 2.96 4.29 4.52 3.31 4.89 2.27
SD 1.26 1.11 1.22 1.88 1.09 0.93 0.83 0.61 1.12 1.31 1.39 1.10 0.97 0.93
N839 839 834 834 834 838 838 839 839 839 839 839 839 839
Range 4 4 6 9 4 3 3 2 4 6 6 4 5 4
*p < 0.05; **p < 0.01; ***p < 0.001.
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associated at all levels of closeness to God, the eect size for
this association was smaller at higher levels of closeness to God.
DISCUSSION
is study examined closeness to God and spiritual struggles
among rst-year college students who identied as religious
or spiritual. First, we replicated previous eects of closeness
to God and spiritual struggle on wellbeing outcomes in a
preregistered, large sample. Although these elements of our
research may not beentirely novel, they contribute to a robust
and incremental science. Leading scholars in psychology of
religion and spirituality argue that large-scale replication projects
are necessary to ensure the credibility of the eld (Van Elk
et al., 2015; Van Elk, 2019). Additionally, we make two novel
contributions. We showed that closeness to God was positively
associated with belonging and negatively associated with
belonging uncertainty, relationships that, to our knowledge,
have not been examined in previous research, especially in a
time of important transition. Additionally, we found potential
buering eects of closeness to God on the deleterious eects
of spiritual struggles.
For basic replications of previous findings on closeness
to God, hypothesized correlations were observed for 11 out
of 12 outcomes (with primary stress appraisal as the exception).
Likewise, significant associations were found for 8/12 outcomes
for spiritual struggles; we did not find support for the
hypothesized negative relationships with meaning in life,
secondary stress appraisal, physical health, or belonging.
Taken together, these results suggest general replicability of
findings, but they also suggest further work is needed
regarding the generalizability across diverse populations for
spiritual struggles.
Simultaneous Effects of Closeness to God
and Spiritual Struggles
Results suggest that some eects for closeness to God and
spiritual struggles were additive for some outcome variables
but would wash out for others. For seven out of 12 outcome
variables, signicant associations were observed for both
closeness to God and spiritual struggles when the two were
simultaneously entered in a regression model. However, for
ve out of 12 outcomes, only one of the spirituality variables
was signicant when both were included in the model. Among
the stress and physical health variables, only closeness to
God was associated with positive outcomes of secondary stress
appraisal and physical health, and only spiritual struggles
were associated with primary stress appraisal, generally
considered to be a negative outcome. ese ndings may
point to critical dierences between the predictors such that
closeness to God tends to serve as a source of comfort or
coping whereas spiritual struggles serve as a direct stressor.
ese ndings are notable in that nearly all the extant literature
examines only one of these variables at a time, and few
studies have examined their concurrent eects.
Among wellbeing outcomes, our results indicated that spiritual
struggles were not associated with meaning in life—unlike
closeness to God, which was positively associated. e lack
of a signicant association may bedue to dierences in types
of spiritual struggle that may not be adequately captured in
a one-item measure. For example, some types of spiritual
struggle may result in a crisis of meaning (e.g., “What if
everything I’ve been taught to believe is wrong?”), but other
types of spiritual struggle may eventually lead to greater clarity
and potentially resolution and growth (e.g., “I’m currently
unsure of what I believe, but I know I can gure it out”;
Exline and Rose, 2005; Desai and Pargament, 2015). e
dierences in associations between closeness to God and spiritual
struggles when predicting key outcomes suggest longitudinal
studies assessing the dynamics of these variables across time
are warranted.
Finally, our results show that closeness to God was associated
with both belonging and belonging uncertainty for religious
students, but spiritual struggles were only signicantly associated
with belonging uncertainty. Because closeness to God is, at
its core, a variable dealing with relational connectedness, it
would make sense that it would be associated with both
belonging and belonging uncertainty. Spiritual struggles, on
the other hand, encompasses many dierent types of stressors
dealing with spirituality that would bemore likely to increase
isolation, lead to social disconnect, and increase belonging
uncertainty but might not necessarily aect feelings of belonging
for religious college students. is is the rst study to examine
how closeness to God and spiritual struggles are associated
TABLE3 | Wellbeing variables regressed on closeness to god and spiritual struggles, controlling for demographic variables, and treatment condition.
Happiness Life satisfaction Meaning in life
βb (SE) pβb (SE) pβb (SE) p
Closeness to god 0.220 0.218 (0.026) <0.001*** 0.241 0.352 (0.038) <0.001*** 0.228 0.190 (0.022) <0.001***
Spiritual struggles −0.183 −0.207 (0.029) <0.001*** −0.185 −0.308 (0.043) <0.001*** −0.082 −0.078 (0.025) 0.002**
Christian 0.079 0.340 (0.110) 0.002** 0.014 0.088 (0.162) 0.590 −0.029 −0.104 (0.095) 0.277
Gender (Female = 1) −0.011 −0.028 (0.067) 0.673 −0.032 −0.123 (0.098) 0.212 0.013 0.030 (0.059) 0.616
URM background −0.021 −0.068 (0.087) 0.436 −0.089 −0.432 (0.128) 0.001** −0.090 −0.250 (0.075) 0.001**
First-generation college −0.026 −0.072 (0.073) 0.321 −0.041 −0.168 (0.107) 0.117 −0.038 −0.088 (0.063) 0.165
Intervention treatment 0.003 0.007 (0.068) 0.918 0.018 0.069 (0.1) 0.486 0.025 0.057 (0.058) 0.328
**p < 0.01; ***p < 0.001.
Gilbertson et al. Spirituality in the First Year of College
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with belonging variables, so these ndings should bereplicated
before rm conclusions are drawn.
Closeness to God Attenuates Some
Negative Effects of Spiritual Struggles
In our exploratory analyses testing interactions between closeness
to God and spiritual struggles among students who identify
as religious, we found that when participants were higher in
closeness to God, spiritual struggles were less strongly associated
with depression and were no longer associated with loneliness.
However, this attenuation was not found for any positive
outcomes, and it was not consistent across most negative
outcomes. ese results suggest that closeness to God may
help avert some negative outcomes of spiritual struggles, which
are common among college students as they encounter challenges
to their faith in new environments (Bryant and Astin, 2008).
ese exploratory ndings extend existing ndings in both
the religious coping and spiritual struggles literature (Krause,
1998; Pargament et al., 1998; Tix and Frazier, 1998; Bryant
and Astin, 2008; Laurin et al., 2014; Jeppsen et al., 2015;
Trevino et al., 2019; Wilt et al., 2019; Zarzycka and Zietek,
2019; Zarzycka and Puchalska-Wasyl, 2020). Although separate
research on closeness to God (a protective factor) and spiritual
struggles (a source of stress) indicates that the two variables
have the potential to relate to one another, only a handful of
studies examined them together (Exline et al., 2000; Harris
et al., 2014; Abernethy et al., 2020) or using closely related
constructs (Trevino et al., 2019). However, these ndings are
based on exploratory analyses, so more research is necessary
before making strong conclusions.
Practical Implications
is study highlights the importance of closeness to God and
spiritual struggles for rst-year students at colleges and
universities in the United States who identify as spiritual or
religious, providing support for the stance of Astin (2004) that
matters of religion and spirituality should be considered an
important aspect of student development. Although religiosity
may shi or decline during the college years (Koenig et al.,
2012; Barry and Abo-Zena, 2014), our ndings suggest there
are aspects of spirituality that continue to be associated with
important outcomes, at least during students’ rst year of
college among the majority of students for whom spirituality
or religion is a part of their life. Many schools work diligently
to address the many challenges that accompany the rst year
of college through organized activities, academic programming,
and psychological interventions with the goal of integration
with the college environment (Tinto, 1987; Bohnert etal., 2007;
Inkelas et al., 2007; Walton and Cohen, 2011; Arnett, 2014;
Yeager et al., 2016). It would behoove college administrators
to also pay greater attention to spirituality when trying to
promote feelings of belonging and inclusion for all students
during the rst year of college. Dworsky etal. (2016) suggested
therapists and counselors use Acceptance-Based erapies (ACT)
to mitigate the negative impacts of avoiding and pushing away
spiritual struggles. Additionally, these ndings suggest that
TABLE4 | Mental health variables regressed on closeness to god and spiritual struggles, controlling for demographic variables and treatment condition.
Anxiety Depression Loneliness Mental health
βb (SE) pβb (SE) pβb (SE) pβb (SE) p
Closeness to god −0.041 −0.029 (0.019) 0.134 −0.122 −0.079 (0.017) <0.001*** −0.085 −0.041 (0.013) 0.002** 0.172 0.149 (0.023) <0.001***
Spiritual struggles 0.160 0.131 (0.021) <0.001*** 0.214 0.157 (0.019) <0.001*** 0.117 0.064 (0.015) <0.001*** −0.172 −0.170 (0.025) <0.001***
Christian −0.042 −0.130 (0.083) 0.114 −0.048 −0.135 (0.074) 0.067 −0.058 −0.123 (0.056) 0.028*0.024 0.091 (0.097) 0.348
Gender (Female = 1) 0.191 0.363 (0.052) <0.001*** 0.053 0.091 (0.047) 0.053 0.108 0.138 (0.034) <0.001*** −0.171 −0.395 (0.059) <0.001***
URM background −0.026 −0.062 (0.064) 0.338 0.073 0.156 (0.057) 0.006** 0.088 0.142 (0.044) 0.001** −0.056 −0.161 (0.076) 0.036*
First-generation college 0.021 0.043 (0.055) 0.436 0.069 0.123 (0.049) 0.012*0.050 0.067 (0.037) 0.069 0.014 0.034 (0.064) 0.593
Intervention treatment −0.041 −0.080 (0.050) 0.107 0.000 0.000 (0.044) 0.992 −0.013 −0.017 (0.034) 0.611 0.023 0.053 (0.059) 0.371
*p < 0.05; **p < 0.01; ***p < 0.001.
Gilbertson et al. Spirituality in the First Year of College
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university counseling center therapists or other student life
personnel might recognize that spiritual struggles may or may
not berelated to negative outcomes, depending on the student’s
closeness to God and the specic outcome.
Constraints on Generality and Directions
for Future Research
e generality of our ndings is likely constrained to rst-
year students at four-year residential colleges in the
United States who identify as religious or spiritual. Notably,
our data were collected before the COVID-19 pandemic.
Although it is unknown whether results would dier if data
were collected during or aer the pandemic, we anticipate
the ndings would remain similar, perhaps with magnied
eect sizes. Other research suggests spiritual struggles were
higher during the pandemic, but religious resources were
protective for health and wellbeing outcomes during the
pandemic (e.g., Coppola et al., 2021).
We excluded students who did not identify as religious
or spiritual, and ndings may dier for them. For example,
they may show little to no variability on these variables.
Alternately, spiritual struggles may not have similarly
deleteriously eects, or closeness to God may not buer
against struggles. Just as the UnitedStates is primarily Christian,
so too was our sample; we would caution against extension
of ndings to predominantly non-Christian contexts. For
instance, Sharma et al. (2009) describe slightly dierent
mechanisms by which spiritual practices more common in
South Asia (i.e., yoga, meditation, and practices that open
one to psychic realms) produce positive physical and mental
health outcomes, including the mitigation of depression,
anxiety, and schizophrenia symptoms. Moreover, the ndings
may not apply equally across all Christian denominations,
which is an important variable to consider in future work.
With those caveats, we anticipate that our ndings would
generally extend to a broad population of college students,
including those past their rst year, since the ndings largely
supported relationships observed in other studies of United
States adults. at said, developmental changes may aect
some of the relationships, particularly those associated
with belonging.
ere could be other contexts—potentially even other
college contexts—in which spiritual struggles could have a
neutral or even positive eect on the outcomes measured
here. If people have a supportive spiritual community, with
leaders or mentors with whom they can discuss their spiritual
struggles, they could beencouraged to work through struggles
and grow from them. In that context, they could experience
those struggles as a normative and positive part of their
journey toward closeness to God specically or in their
spiritual journey more generally.
As noted above, the data for the present research were
collected as part of a larger study that tested the ecacy of
TABLE5 | Stress and physical health outcomes regressed on closeness to god and spiritual struggles, controlling for demographic variables and treatment condition.
Primary stress Secondary stress Physical health
βb (SE) pβb (SE) pβb (SE) p
Closeness to god −0.035 −0.036 (0.028) 0.199 0.213 0.231 (0.028) <0.001*** 0.184 0.157 (0.023) <0.001***
Spiritual struggles 0.155 0.18 (0.031) <0.001*** −0.072 −0.089 (0.032) 0.005** −0.109 −0.106 (0.025) <0.001***
Christian 0.008 0.035 (0.118) 0.764 0.006 0.027 (0.122) 0.826 −0.004 −0.015 (0.097) 0.877
Gender (Female = 1) 0.137 0.369 (0.073) <0.001*** −0.204 −0.589 (0.074) <0.001*** −0.184 −0.417 (0.062) <0.001***
URM background −0.056 −0.188 (0.092) 0.042* −0.017 −0.061 (0.096) 0.524 −0.072 −0.204 (0.075) 0.007**
First-generation
college
0.045 0.126 (0.078) 0.105 −0.048 −0.146 (0.08) 0.070 0.001 0.003 (0.064) 0.964
Intervention treatment −0.014 −0.039 (0.071) 0.584 0.005 0.016 (0.075) 0.833 0.043 0.099 (0.058) 0.091
*p < 0.05; **p < 0.01; ***p < 0.001.
TABLE6 | Belonging variables regressed on closeness to god and spiritual struggles, controlling for demographic variables and treatment condition.
Belonging Belonging Uncertainty
βb (SE) pβb (SE) p
Closeness to god 0.098 0.074 (0.021) <0.001*** −0.102 −0.076 (0.02) <0.001***
Spiritual struggles −0.077 −0.067 (0.023) 0.004** 0.110 0.094 (0.022) <0.001***
Christian −0.007 −0.024 (0.088) 0.783 −0.007 −0.023 (0.087) 0.794
Gender (Female = 1) −0.044 −0.090 (0.056) 0.110 0.023 0.046 (0.055) 0.401
URM background −0.168 −0.425 (0.069) <0.001*** 0.141 0.350 (0.067) <0.001***
First-generation college −0.042 −0.089 (0.059) 0.126 0.034 0.070 (0.057) 0.225
Intervention treatment 0.018 0.036 (0.053) 0.492 −0.006 −0.013 (0.052) 0.802
**p < 0.01; ***p < 0.001.
Gilbertson et al. Spirituality in the First Year of College
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a social-belonging intervention (see Walton et al., 2021,
Unpublished; see footnote 2 for results of the main analysis
looking at eects on structurally disadvantaged students; see
also LaCosse et al., 2020 and Logel et al., 2020, for positive
eects of the intervention on two other stigmatized groups).
Although the intervention content did not relate to spirituality
and our analyses included intervention condition as a covariate,
future research should collect data from a similar sample of
students for the sole purpose of examining spiritual variables
and their associations with important college outcomes. A study
of this nature would also permit the use of longer measures
for the variables of interest, reducing measurement error. It
would also provide the opportunity to replicate and better
understand the exploratory interaction eects we found.
e cross-sectional nature of the data precludes inferences
regarding the directionality of eects. Previous work with
psychiatric inpatients found that religious comfort, which is
akin to closeness to God, predicted subsequent depression in
an autoregressive cross-lagged model, but spiritual struggles
and depression were not signicant cross-lagged predictors
(Abernethy et al., 2020). us, it is possible that closeness to
God and spiritual struggles might predict subsequent wellbeing,
wellbeing might predict subsequent spirituality, or that these
variables are only cross-sectionally correlated.
Experimental research that tests a causal link between
closeness to God or spiritual struggles and college outcomes
would clarify the directionality of eects and provide even
more support for administrators to pursue activities and
programming that cultivate students’ spiritual identities, at
least for students who identify as religiously aliated. e
connection between belonging and spiritual variables may
also provide a rich area to further examine in the future.
Rios et al. (2015) have begun research in this area when
they examined how religious identity may impact academic
outcomes. If religious students’ sense of belonging could
bebetter supported in academic environments where stereotype
threat based on religious identity may arise (perhaps by
supporting students’ sense of closeness to God), then academic
outcomes for those students could beimproved. Last, further
research is necessary to explore the moderating eect of
closeness to God and determine how such an eect could
be utilized by university administrators.
CONCLUSION
Our results highlight the importance of considering closeness
to God and spiritual struggles for wellbeing, mental health,
and belonging during the rst year of college alongside other
variables typically examined in higher education contexts.
Additionally, our study provides greater insights into the role
of closeness to God in buering against the negative eects
of spiritual struggles on negative outcomes for rst-year college
students during this critical period.
DATA AVAILABILITY STATEMENT
e data underlying the results presented in the study are
available from the College Transition Collaborative (https://
collegetransitioncollaborative.org/) via contact from CL (clogel@
uwaterloo.ca).
ETHICS STATEMENT
is secondary analysis of data was approved by the Human
Subjects Review Committee at Fuller eological Seminary
(#a4/18.103). e participants provided their written informed
consent to participate in this study.
AUTHOR CONTRIBUTIONS
MG, SB, SS, and CL: conceptualization and methodology. MG
and SB: soware, formal analysis, data curation, and visualization.
SB: validation. CL: resources. MG, SS, and TA: writing—original
dra preparation. SB, SS, and CL: writing—review and editing.
SS and CL: supervision. MG and CL: project administration.
TABLE7 | Depression and loneliness regressed on closeness to god, spiritual struggles, and their interaction.
Depression Loneliness
βb (SE) pβb (SE) p
Closeness to god −0.004 −0.002 (0.035) 0.948 0.042 0.021 (0.027) 0.442
Spiritual struggles 0.333 0.246 (0.041) <0.001*** 0.276 0.153 (0.031) <0.001***
Intervention treatment 0.019 0.033 (0.042) 0.431 −0.010 −0.014 (0.032) 0.672
Spiritual struggles × Closeness to god −0.176 −0.035 (0.014) 0.009* −0.210 −0.031 (0.010) 0.002**
*p < 0.05; **p < 0.01; ***p < 0.001.
TABLE8 | Simple slopes of spiritual struggles at +1 SD, the Mean, and −1 SD
of closeness to god.
Closeness
to God
Depression Loneliness
b (SE) p b (SE) p
+1 SD 0.100 (0.026) <0.001*** 0.023 (0.02) 0.259
Mean 0.145 (0.018) <0.001*** 0.063 (0.014) <0.001***
−1 SD 0.190 (0.024) <0.001*** 0.103 (0.018) <0.001***
***p < 0.001.
Gilbertson et al. Spirituality in the First Year of College
Frontiers in Psychology | www.frontiersin.org 13 March 2022 | Volume 13 | Article 742265
CL: funding acquisition. All authors contributed to the article
and approved the submitted version.
FUNDING
is paper analyzes data from a larger dataset collected by
the College Transition Collaborative testing the eects of
prematriculation social-belonging interventions on students’
experience in the transition to college (PIs: Christine Logel,
Mary Murphy, Greg Walton, and David Yeager). e CTC
Belonging Project was funded by the Raikes Foundation, the
National Science Foundation, the Higher Education Quality
Council of Ontario, and Partner Schools, made possible through
methods and data systems created by the Project for Education
Research at Scales (PERTS), and supported by the Mindset
Scholars Network.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
ank you to C. Donegan for statistical support.
SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL
e Supplementary Material for this article can befound online
at: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.742265/
full#supplementary-material
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