An Empirical Study On Christians' Psychological Well-Being, Religiosity, Perceived Stress And Social Support

Happiness is an ancient but hot topic. Historically there are two arguments as to what the essence of happiness is: hedonism and eudaimonism. Hedonism claims that what is essential to happiness is pleasure, which is the only intrinsic good. However, the western religious scholars and thinkers do not agree with this view. They think that happiness means self-realization and individual potential fully displayed. Based on this doctrine, psychological well-being is born, which is concerned with how and to what degree a person achieves his goal. It is closely related with religion, self-fulfillment, forgiveness and social support. In the west, many studies have been conducted on psychological well-being of Christians, with Christianity obviously improving the believers'psychological well-being. Contrasted with this are a limited number of studies on Chinese Christians'well-being. It is still unclear as to whether Christian doctrine could bring those Christians more psychological well-being and what features their well-being compared with citizens without religious beliefs.Considering the special national condition of China, that is, the alien status of Christianity, the now strategic transition period of religious development with religious pluralism policy, it becomes urgent and noteworthy to do such a research. The study first revised psychological well-being scale and Christian's religion scale and checked the revised questionnaires to ensure their construct validity, using confirmatory factor analysis. Then, a comparative study was conducted to investigate psychological well-being, religiosity, perceived stress and social support. Finally, a general condition of Chinese Christians'well-being and related influencing factors were investigated.Three hundred Christians (age: 19-72 years, mean: 42.6 years) were randomly selected from Lanzhou Shanzishi Christian Church, Anning Christian Church, Zhangye Christian Church and Xi'an Christian Church, where the same number of non-believers were also sampled as a control group. 437 valid questionnaires were obtained, of which, 205 valid questionnaires were filled in by Christians (117 females), 232 valid questionnaires by non-believers (120 females). The instrumentation included Revised Psychological Well-being Scale, Revised Intrinsic- Extrinsic Religiosity Scale, Perceived Social Support Scale, Perceived Stress Scale (Chinese version). Two research methods of questionnaire and interviewing were used in the survey. The study drew the following conclusions.(1)The revised religiosity scale is composed of 13 items, with intrinsic and extrinsic dimensions remained. It is high in reliability, discrimination and construct validity, with all indexes meeting the fitting requirements successfully. The revised psychological well-being scale is composed of 17 items, with single one dimension of psychological well-being as the original one. It is checked to be high in reliability, discrimination and construct validity. All indexes are meeting fitting requirements, too.(2) No significant difference is found in the factors of psychological well-being and social support between Christians and non-Christians, albeit the higher total scores of perceived stress of Christians than non-Christians.(3)Christians of different age groups are significantly different as regards to religiosity, perceived stress, psychological well-being and social support. With increased ages, Christians'psychological happiness, religiosity and social support increased while perceived stress decreased.(4) Male and female Christians are significantly different in psychological well-being, social support and perceived stress, and marginally different in intrinsic-extrinsic trend of religiosity. Female Christians scored higher than males in psychological well-being, social support and perceived stress while males scored higher than females in perceived stress and extrinsic religiosity.(5) Christians with different health conditions are significantly different in religiosity and psychological well-being. With improved health, psychological well-being rised but religiosity lowered.(6) Psychological well-being was correlated to a medium degree with intrinsic religiosity and social support, and negatively correlated with perceived stress in a slightly manner; while intrinsic religiosity was correlated with perceived stress and social support to a varied degree, extrinsic religiosity and perceived stress did not related with social support significantly.(7) Perceived stress was found to have the totally mediating effect on religiosity and psychological well-being. However, the mediating effect of social effect on religiosity and psychological well-being needs further evidence.