Structure of Prayer Scale

Abstract

The Structure of Prayer Scale (SPS; Luckow et al., 1997) is a multidimensional psychometric instrument developed within the psychology of religion and spirituality to operationalize, assess, and differentiate subjective prayer practices and structural typologies. Moving beyond traditional unidimensional indices that evaluate prayer solely on behavioral frequency (e.g., how often an individual prays per day or week), the SPS captures the qualitative cognitive, affective, behavioral, and intercessionary heterogeneity inherent in prayer experiences. Comprising 28 self-report items scored on a 6-point Likert scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 6 (strongly agree), the instrument delineates six distinct functional dimensions of prayer: Confession (5 items), Petition (3 items), Ritual (3 items), Meditation-Improvement (5 items), Habitual (4 items), and Compassionate Petition (8 items). Psychometric validation across diverse adult cohorts—encompassing public university students, private Christian college undergraduates, conservative evangelical seminary students, and clinical oncology samples (total N = 986 across six independent cohorts)—revealed consistent latent structures via principal components and exploratory factor analytic solutions. Internal consistency estimates across subscales demonstrate generally robust reliability, with Cronbach’s alpha coefficients spanning .62 to .95 across secular and medical cohorts, though exhibiting contextual attenuation in homogeneous conservative theological populations due to range restriction. The instrument demonstrates strong face, content, and construct validity, serving as an empirical foundation for investigations into religious coping, cognitive-behavioral self-regulation, affective well-being, and health-related quality of life.

Keywords

Structure of Prayer Scale, psychology of religion, prayer types, petitionary prayer, compassionate petition, confession, religious coping, psychometrics, spiritual assessment, ritualistic prayer

Authors

The Structure of Prayer Scale was conceptualized, developed, and empirically validated through a sustained collaborative research initiative at the University of Denver and affiliated academic institutions. The principal investigators and co-authors responsible for the instrument’s development include:

• Anne Luckow, Ph.D. – Department of Psychology, University of Denver, Denver, Colorado, United States.
• Kevin L. Ladd, Ph.D. – Department of Psychology, Indiana University South Bend, South Bend, Indiana, United States (formerly University of Denver). An internationally recognized scholar in the empirical investigation of prayer geometry, religious cognition, and physiological correlates of spiritual practices.
• Bernard Spilka, Ph.D. – Professor Emeritus of Psychology, University of Denver, Denver, Colorado, United States. A foundational pioneer in the empirical psychology of religion, author of seminal reference treatises on religious development, attribution theory, and prayer typology.
• Daniel N. McIntosh, Ph.D. – Professor of Psychology, Department of Psychology, University of Denver, Denver, Colorado, United States. Specializing in social psychology, emotional processing, and coping with acute life crises.
• Crystal L. Park, Ph.D. (co-author listed in early iterations as C. Parks) – Professor of Psychological Sciences, University of Connecticut, Storrs, Connecticut, United States. Renowned for work on meaning making, religious coping, and health psychology.
• Dorothy LaForett, Ph.D. – Department of Psychology, University of Denver, Denver, Colorado, United States. Clinical and developmental psychologist focusing on behavioral health and psychometrics.

Purpose

For decades, empirical psychology treated religious behavior largely as a demographic variable, assessing prayer through crude, single-item behavioral metrics such as quantitative prayer frequency or binary indicators of devotional practice (e.g., “Do you pray? Yes/No” or “How many times per day do you pray?”). Pioneering empirical researchers, notably Bernard Spilka, Kevin Ladd, and Margaret Poloma, recognized that such reductionist metrics obscure profound qualitative differences in prayer behavior. Prayer serves fundamentally divergent personal, interpersonal, and theological functions across individuals and contexts. A person praying out of compulsive guilt or rote obligation engages psychological mechanisms distinct from someone seeking mystical contemplative communion, requesting external intercession, or offering empathic supplication for suffering peers.

The primary purpose of the Structure of Prayer Scale (SPS) is to provide a standardized, psychometrically grounded instrument capable of measuring the broad, conceptually distinct modalities of prayer behavior. Designed for deployment in both basic social-cognitive research and applied clinical-health settings, the SPS enables investigators to map how different prayer typologies uniquely correlate with, predict, or moderate psychological outcomes, including emotional regulation, mental health, existential coping during medical adversity, and interpersonal altruism.

In clinical and health psychology contexts, the SPS serves as a diagnostic and analytical resource. Rather than assuming that prayer uniformly fosters positive health outcomes, the SPS allows clinicians and behavioral medicine researchers to disaggregate adaptive prayer forms (such as compassionate petition or meditative self-improvement) from potentially maladaptive or distress-laden forms (such as rigid ritualism, excessive guilt-driven confession, or transactional petition). In health research, notably oncology, the instrument has clarified how patients mobilize specific prayer behaviors to negotiate perceived helplessness, manage physical pain, and seek emotional equilibrium in the shadow of life-threatening disease.

Psychological Construct

The psychological construct operationalized by the Structure of Prayer Scale is prayer as a multidimensional, cognitive-behavioral, affective, and communicative phenomenon. Rather than viewing prayer merely as an institutional religious observance, the SPS models it as an active coping mechanism, a relational dialogue with a perceived transcendent agent, and an internal reflective state. The scale measures six structural dimensions:

1. Confession (5 items)

The Confession subscale assesses self-evaluative prayer behaviors focused on moral accountability, disclosure of sins, acknowledgment of personal failings, and the resolution of guilt. Psychologically, confession mirrors cathartic disclosure and moral self-regulation. Individuals articulate transgressions, seeking restorative moral alignment with God or the divine. Items emphasize transparency (e.g., telling God about faults) and the emotional relief obtained through verbalizing moral distress (e.g., feeling that disclosure mitigates subjective guilt). In psychotherapeutic contexts, this dimension interfaces directly with self-conscious emotions such as shame, guilt, and moral repair.

2. Petition (3 items)

The Petition dimension captures instrumental, self-directed supplication wherein the individual solicits divine intervention for concrete personal needs, favor, or problem resolution. Rooted in what scholars term “transactional” or “tangible” prayer, petition represents an externalized problem-focused coping mechanism. The respondent openly acknowledges personal agency limitations and requests that the deity alter external circumstances, resolve crises, or grant specific desires (e.g., asking God for special favors or asking God to solve intractable problems).

3. Ritual (3 items)

The Ritual subscale measures the formal, structural, and behavioral invariance of an individual’s devotional practice. It operationalizes prayer that adheres to strictly ordered sequences, fixed liturgical cadences, or repetitive verbal formulas. From a cognitive perspective, ritual prayer relies on automaticity and scripted behavioral execution. It may serve an anxiety-buffering function by providing cognitive predictability and structural order in times of existential uncertainty, though elevated scores can also indicate religious rigidity or scrupulosity.

4. Meditation-Improvement (5 items)

The Meditation-Improvement dimension evaluates inward-focused, transformative, and experiential prayer practices aimed at deep divine communion, personal spiritual development, and emotional stabilization. This subscale reflects contemplative interiority, wherein the pray-er seeks to know God intimately, align with an inner spirit, and cultivate characterological growth (e.g., desiring to become a better person, finding emotional balance and security). Psychometrically, this dimension incorporates both behavioral striving for self-actualization and the affective sequelae of meditative states.

5. Habitual (4 items)

The Habitual dimension captures the temporal regularity and behavioral routinization of prayer embedded within daily circadian rhythms. Unlike the Ritual subscale, which focuses on the procedural content and repetition of phrases, Habitual prayer reflects chronological contextualization—praying upon awakening, before meals, before sleep, and sustaining daily consistency. This subscale taps into automated lifestyle integration and internalized religious habits formed through developmental socialization.

6. Compassionate Petition (8 items)

The Compassionate Petition (often termed intercessory prayer) subscale represents prosocial, other-oriented prayer characterized by altruistic concern, empathy, and expressions of gratitude for divine benevolence. In this modality, individuals redirect attention away from self-centered needs toward the health, well-being, and protection of loved ones, friends, and suffering humanity. It combines outward empathetic intercession (e.g., praying for others when personally unable to assist them) with thanksgiving (giving thanks for answers and divine providence), reflecting a relational orientation rooted in communality and benevolence.

Theoretical Framework

The conceptual foundation of the Structure of Prayer Scale is rooted in attribution theory within the psychology of religion, pioneered by Bernard Spilka and colleagues (Spilka, Shaver, & Kirkpatrick, 1985), as well as multi-dimensional cognitive-phenomenological models of religious coping (Pargament, 1997). In Spilka’s attributional framework, individuals possess an inherent need to maintain meaning, control, and self-esteem. When encountering ambiguous, threatening, or intractable life circumstances, individuals construct attributions that assign agency, intentionality, and causal power to divine entities.

Prayer functions as a dynamic, bidirectional attributional dialogue. Rather than a static belief system, it represents an active cognitive and communicative behavior through which an individual communicates with, negotiates with, and reinterprets reality through an imagined or perceived divine attachment figure. Ladd and Spilka (2002) subsequently expanded this theoretical paradigm into a cognitive-geometry model of prayer, characterizing prayer along inward, outward, and upward dimensions:

• Inward prayer: Focuses on self-examination, self-improvement, psychological stabilization, and emotional reflection (reflected in the SPS Meditation-Improvement and Confession subscales).
• Outward prayer: Centers on human relationships, empathy, intercession for others, and relational bonds (captured by the SPS Compassionate Petition subscale).
• Upward prayer: Addresses the direct human-divine interface through ritualized reverence, adherence to liturgical structures, and specific requests directed toward divine omnipotence (operationalized in the SPS Ritual and Petition subscales).

Furthermore, the SPS draws heavily upon functionalist coping theory. In the stress and coping model of Lazarus and Folkman (1984), coping behaviors are partitioned into problem-focused and emotion-focused strategies. The Structure of Prayer Scale operationalizes how prayer traverses both coping poles: Petition serves an externalized problem-focused function (seeking concrete problem resolution), whereas Confession, Meditation-Improvement, and Ritual fulfill internal emotion-focused and meaning-focused coping demands by regulating negative affect, mitigating guilt, and restoring cognitive coherence.

Validity

The psychometric validity of the Structure of Prayer Scale has been established across structural, convergent, construct, and content-related domains:

Face and Content Validity

During initial instrument development, item pools were generated through systematic qualitative interviews and theoretical reviews of historical prayer typologies (including works by William James, Friedrich Heiler, and contemporary clinical theologians). The 28 retained items explicitly cover behavioral practices, linguistic phrasing, and personal intentions across the six target domains, providing unambiguous content validity confirmed by expert psychometric review in religious psychology.

Construct and Factorial Validity

Factorial validity was established through independent component and factor analyses across six distinct demographic cohorts (Luckow et al., 1996, 1997). The extraction of six stable components demonstrating consistent item configurations across both secular university students and medical oncology cohorts confirms robust latent construct validity. Inter-scale correlation matrices from ancestral versions and validation samples demonstrated that while the subscales share common variance associated with general religiosity, they exhibit significant discriminant independence. Individuals commonly utilize an array of prayer strategies, but personal profiles vary systematically according to contextual stressors and theological orientation.

Convergent and Criterion Validity

Subscales of the SPS demonstrate strong convergent validity with established measures of religiosity, coping, and personality:

• Compassionate Petition: Positively correlates with dispositional empathy, perspective-taking, agreeableness, and prosocial altruistic behavior.
• Ritual: Correlates with external religious orientation, intrinsic rigidity, and needs for structural certainty.
• Meditation-Improvement: Exhibits strong positive associations with intrinsic religious orientation, psychological well-being, mindfulness indicators, and positive emotional affect.
• Confession: Significantly associates with measures of moral self-awareness, private self-consciousness, and post-transgression remorse.

Discriminant Validity and Methodological Considerations

Psychometricians have noted an important methodological caveat regarding the Meditation-Improvement subscale. Items such as “When I pray, I feel secure” and “Prayer helps me keep my life balanced and happy” reflect subjective emotional outcomes and affective states resulting from prayer rather than purely behavioral prayer mechanics. Consequently, researchers investigating the causal associations between prayer typologies and subjective well-being, positive affect, or psychological adjustment must account for potential conceptual and item-level overlap to avoid inflated multicollinearity.

Reliability

The internal consistency of the Structure of Prayer Scale was rigorously evaluated across six diverse samples (totaling nearly 1,000 respondents) and an aggregated multi-sample cohort. Reliability estimates (Cronbach’s alpha) across these validation cohorts demonstrate generally high internal consistency across secular and clinical populations, with selective attenuation in highly homogeneous theological populations:

As evident from the empirical data, the scales exhibit high reliability in normative and clinical cohorts. However, notable psychometric attenuation occurred in specific sub-populations. Specifically, in Sample 2 (the Christian liberal arts college), alpha coefficients for Confession (α = .58) and Petition (α = .44) were markedly reduced. Similarly, in Sample 5 (the conservative evangelical seminary), the Meditation-Improvement subscale dropped to α = .19. Methodological analyses indicate that these anomalies stem from severe range restriction. In highly devout theological environments, respondents exhibit strong ceiling effects and near-zero response variance on items reflecting normative devotional behaviors, drastically depressing classical internal consistency estimates that rely upon response variance.

Factor Analysis

The latent dimensionality of the Structure of Prayer Scale was derived and corroborated through a multi-stage factor analytic strategy. Initial item pools were subjected to Principal Components Analysis (PCA) across all six empirical samples independently, followed by pooled PCA on combined datasets (Samples 1, 2, and 3, which shared identical response coding structures) to optimize the subject-to-item ratio and maximize variance breadth.

Factor Extraction and Rotation Criteria

Extraction decisions were governed by Kaiser’s criterion (eigenvalues ≥ 1.0) in conjunction with Cattell’s scree test evaluations and conceptual interpretability. Both orthogonal (Varimax) and oblique (Promax / Direct Oblimin) rotational techniques were explored. Because prayer dimensions demonstrate natural theoretical intercorrelations (as pray-ers rarely engage exclusively in a single isolated modality), oblique solutions provided superior structural fidelity.

Item Selection and Loading Thresholds

A rigorous factor loading criterion of ≥ .30 was established as the minimum threshold for item retention. Items were retained for the final 28-item instrument only if they demonstrated high, unambiguous primary loadings on their designated latent factor consistently across multiple cohorts, while maintaining minimal secondary cross-loadings (< .25). The resulting six-factor solution accounted for the majority of common item variance and yielded the definitive 28-item configuration:

• Factor 1: Compassionate Petition (8 items) – Items 5, 6, 8, 11, 18, 19, 21, 24. Characterized by high loadings reflecting empathy, concern for loved ones, and thanksgiving.
• Factor 2: Confession (5 items) – Items 3, 4, 7, 14, 17. Defined by loadings tapping moral accountability, guilt mitigation, and sharing faults with God.
• Factor 3: Meditation-Improvement (5 items) – Items 2, 16, 23, 26, 27. Dominated by loadings on interior communion, inner peace, and personal character development.
• Factor 4: Habitual (4 items) – Items 10, 12, 25, 28. Composed of loadings related to circadian prayer habits (meals, waking, sleeping, daily recurrence).
• Factor 5: Petition (3 items) – Items 13, 15, 22. Grouped by items specifying requests for divine problem solving and tangible favors.
• Factor 6: Ritual (3 items) – Items 1, 9, 20. Manifested by loadings reflecting adherence to strict sequences, liturgical order, and repetitive phrases.

Instrument / Measurement Tool

• Instrument Name: Structure of Prayer Scale (SPS)
• Alternative Names: Structure of Prayer Questionnaire, Spilka-Ladd Prayer Scale
• Authors: Anne Luckow, Kevin L. Ladd, Bernard Spilka, Daniel N. McIntosh, Crystal L. Park, and Dorothy LaForett
• Publication / Validation Date: 1996–1997
• Construct Assessed: Multidimensional prayer behaviors, styles, and structural modalities
• Administration Format: Self-administered paper-and-pencil or computer-assisted questionnaire
• Time Required: 5 to 10 minutes
• Target Population: Adults and adolescents across diverse religious, spiritual, or secular backgrounds
• Total Number of Items: 28 items
• Subscale Item Breakdown:
  • Confession: 5 items (Items 3, 4, 7, 14, 17)
  • Petition: 3 items (Items 13, 15, 22)
  • Ritual: 3 items (Items 1, 9, 20)
  • Meditation-Improvement: 5 items (Items 2, 16, 23, 26, 27)
  • Habitual: 4 items (Items 10, 12, 25, 28)
  • Compassionate Petition: 8 items (Items 5, 6, 8, 11, 18, 19, 21, 24)
• Response Scale: 6-point Likert agreement scale:
  • 1 = Strongly disagree
  • 2 = Moderately disagree
  • 3 = Slightly disagree
  • 4 = Slightly agree
  • 5 = Moderately agree
  • 6 = Strongly agree
• Scoring Procedures: Subscale scores are calculated by summing or averaging the individual item ratings within each dimension. No items require reverse scoring. Higher scores reflect greater endorsement and higher frequency of that specific prayer modality. Subscales are interpreted as independent dimensions rather than collapsed into a single composite total score.
• Contextual Flexibility: Standard instructions can be adapted to evaluate general dispositional prayer patterns or situated prayer responses to specific life crises (e.g., medical diagnoses, bereavement, or acute psychological stress).

Permissions & Fee and Test Year

The Structure of Prayer Scale was finalized and documented in 1997 following preliminary psychometric presentations at the American Psychological Association Annual Conventions in 1992 and 1996. The instrument was developed within an academic research setting at the University of Denver.

Copyright and Usage Policy: The Structure of Prayer Scale is classified as an academic, open-access psychometric instrument intended for scholarly, educational, and non-commercial empirical research. No licensing fees or royalty payments are required for academic investigators utilizing the measure. Researchers administering the SPS are expected to appropriately cite the originating validation papers and scale documentation (Luckow et al., 1996, 1997; Ladd & Spilka, 2002). Parties seeking commercial deployment or incorporation into proprietary commercial assessment software should seek written permission from the primary surviving corresponding authors or institutional copyright representatives.

References

• Beck, J. R., Spilka, B., & Mason, R. (1992, August). Prayer in religious and social perspective: A study of a seminary sample [Paper presentation]. American Psychological Association 100th Annual Convention, Washington, DC, United States.
• Ladd, K. L., & Spilka, B. (2002). Inward, outward, and upward: Cognitive aspects of prayer. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 41(3), 475–484. https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-5906.00131
• Lazarus, R. S., & Folkman, S. (1984). Stress, appraisal, and coping. Springer Publishing Company.
• Luckow, A., Ladd, K. L., Spilka, B., McIntosh, D. N., Paloma, M., Parks, C., & LaForett, D. (1996, August). The structure of prayer: Explorations and confirmations [Paper presentation]. American Psychological Association 104th Annual Convention, Toronto, ON, Canada.
• Luckow, A., Ladd, K. L., Spilka, B., McIntosh, D. N., Parks, C., & LaForett, D. (1997). The structure of prayer [Unpublished manuscript]. Department of Psychology, University of Denver, Denver, CO, United States.
• Pargament, K. I. (1997). The psychology of religion and coping: Theory, research, practice. Guilford Press.
• Poloma, M. M., & Gallup, G. H., Jr. (1991). Varieties of prayer: A survey report. Trinity Press International.
• Spilka, B., Shaver, P., & Kirkpatrick, L. A. (1985). A general attribution theory for the psychology of religion. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 24(1), 1–20. https://doi.org/10.2307/1386272

13. Items of the Scale (Questionnaire)