Psychology Faculty Publications

Document Type

Article

Abstract

OBJECTIVE: Many studies have documented significant associations between religion and spirituality (R/S) and health, but relatively few prospective analyses exist that can support causal inferences. To date, there has been no systematic analysis of R/S survey items collected in US cohort studies. We conducted a systematic content analysis of all surveys ever fielded in 20 diverse US cohort studies funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to identify all R/S-related items collected from each cohort's baseline survey through 2014.

DESIGN: An R|S Ontology was developed from our systematic content analysis to categorise all R/S survey items identified into key conceptual categories. A systematic literature review was completed for each R/S item to identify any cohort publications involving these items through 2018.

RESULTS: Our content analysis identified 319 R/S survey items, reflecting 213 unique R/S constructs and 50 R|S Ontology categories. 193 of the 319 extant R/S survey items had been analysed in at least one published paper. Using these data, we created the R|S Atlas (https://atlas.mgh.harvard.edu/), a publicly available, online relational database that allows investigators to identify R/S survey items that have been collected by US cohorts, and to further refine searches by other key data available in cohorts that may be necessary for a given study (eg, race/ethnicity, availability of DNA or geocoded data).

CONCLUSIONS: R|S Atlas not only allows researchers to identify available sources of R/S data in cohort studies but will also assist in identifying novel research questions that have yet to be explored within the context of US cohort studies.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License

Publication Date

10-25-2021

Publication Title

BMJ Open

Publisher

BMJ

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2020-043830

Volume

11

Issue

10

Start Page No.

1

End Page No.

9

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Psychology Commons

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