Page - 237 - in Biodiversity and Health in the Face of Climate Change

237 is unlikely to be feasible; researchers will necessarily need to choose pieces of the model to investigate and may test various constructs as moderators, mediators or short-term outcomes. 10.4.2 Measurement of  Key Constructs Figure 10.2 provides insight into important elements and relationships of biodiver- sity and spiritual well-being. Here we consider the measurement of the two key constructs. 10.4.2.1 Spiritual Well-Being Measurement of spiritual well-being has proved challenging and may be seen as aiming to “measure the immeasurable” (Moberg 2010, p.  99). Although few spiri- tual well-being measures have been applied in nature-health research, more than 300 scales to measure spiritual well-being, spirituality or similar constructs have been developed (see Fisher, J.W. 2015). The majority utilise closed-ended Likert scale measurements (e.g. Delaney 2005; Ellison, C. 1983; Elkins et  al. 1988; Reker 2003) and often concentrate on specific aspects of spiritual well-being such as exis- tential well-being (life meaning, purpose, values) or religious well-being (relation- ship with higher power) (see, e.g., Ellison, L. 2006; Peterman et  al. 2002). In health-care settings, existential well-being, but not religious well-being, has been predictive of better quality of life, mental health or physical health (e.g. Edmondson et  al. 2008). Spiritual well-being scales also have been critiqued for an overreliance on correlates of traditional Western religiosity, such as institutional affiliation and belief in God or a higher power (e.g. Klein et  al. 2016). Such faith- or religious- focused content may alienate individuals who experience spiritual well-being but do not think of themselves as religious (Moreira-Almeida and Koenig 2006). Spiritual beliefs and well-being are culturally specific and need to be measured using lan- guage and ideas that fit the particular group of respondents under study. For exam- ple, Dominguez et  al. (2010) created a Saint’s Belief Index to explore the association of traditional beliefs in  local Islamic Saints and new agro-pastoral practices that had previously been linked to biodiversity loss. Few existing scales cover our four relational domains of spiritual well-being (see Table  10.1) evenly, with the relationship to the environment or to community often neglected. However, researchers have utilised qualitative methods effectively to explore the meanings and lived experience behind the concept of spiritual well- being and its presence in and through interaction with the natural environment (e.g. Bell-Williams 2016; Fredrickson and Anderson, 1999; Unruh and Hutchinson 2011). We favour measuring J.  Fisher’s (2011) four domains of spiritual well-being as the outcome of interest in studies of the effects of being in/living with biodiverse, extraordinary and ordinary nature, because of the explicit inclusion of the domains 10 Biodiversity and  Spiritual Well-being