The Assessment of Spirituality and Religious Sentiments (ASPIRES) Scale:  An Empirically Sound Measure of the Numinous for Healthcare Professionals, presented by the Department of Social Work at University of Maryland Medical Center.  Ralph L. Piedmont, Ph.D., Professor, Loyola Univesity of Maryland will present the ASPIRES model of spirituality, define its constructs, present validity evidence and demonstrate how to interpret scores.

The Assessment of Spirituality and Religious Sentiments (ASPIRES) scale: An empirically sound measure of the numinous for health-care professional.

Medicine has always recognized the importance of spirituality in caring for patients, and medical interest in spiritual assessment has grown steadily over the past 10 years. Though multiple scales have been developed to understand how patients manage the larger existential issues impacting their treatment experience, most scales are limited in that they provide no clear definitions of spirituality as an organismic construct and no empirical documentation on how information obtained from these scales add to our understanding of patients over existing psychosocial measures.  

Drawing from field of Personality Psychology, the Assessment of Spirituality and Religious Sentiments (ASPIRES) scale was developed to provide a conceptually clear, empirically sustainable measure of spirituality that would generalize across faith denominations, cultures, and languages. Research on the ASPIRES has demonstrated it to capture a nondenominational, universal motivational construct that uniquely predicts a wide array of mental and physical health outcomes. This workshop will present the ASPIRES model of spirituality, define its constructs, present validity evidence, and demonstrate how to interpret scores.  

Ralph L. Piedmont received his Ph.D. in Personality Psychology from Boston University in 1989. He then did a two-year postdoctoral fellowship at the National Institute on Aging which focused on the Five-Factor Model of Personality and its application in a number of clinical and applied contexts. This work serves as an organizing paradigm for his research on spirituality and its assessment. Currently, Ralph is a Professor of Pastoral Counseling at Loyola University, Maryland and serves as the department’s Director of Doctoral Research. He has developed a motivational measure of spirituality, the Assessment of Spirituality and Religious Sentiments (ASPIRES) which has shown to be a significant predictor of a wide range of psychosocial outcomes across a variety of cultures and faith orientations. Ralph is the Founding Editor of Psychology of Religion and Spirituality which is published by the American Psychological Association starting in 2009. It is the official journal for Division 36 (Society for the Psychology of Religion and Spirituality) of the APA. Ralph is also the editor of the annual serial publication, Research in the Social Scientific Study of Religion, which is published by Brill, as well as being on the editorial board of  several journals, including Measurement and Evaluation in Counseling and Development and a consulting editor for the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology and the Journal of Personality Assessment. Ralph has published over 100 professional research articles, book chapters, and books in the area of personality assessment and spirituality. For more information about Ralph and the courses he teaches, visit his web-site at: www.evergreen.loyola.edu/~rpiedmont

Continuing Education Credits have been applied for both Social Work and Nursing.  Applications have been submitted for 3 hours of continuing education credit to the Maryland Board of Social work Examiners and the Maryland Nursing Association.

Parking fees ARE NOT INCLUDED.  For additional information on parking, please go to: www.umm.edu/gethere/ for more information.

For additional information on this program, please email Caroline Silva at csilva@umm.edu.