The Spiritual Safety Survey (S-SAFE)
What is the Spiritual Safety Survey?
The S-SAFE is a validated measure for psychological safety and risk of spiritual abuse in Christian communities.
The S-SAFE is free for personal use. To inquire about an assessment using the S-SAFE, please contact us.
About the Research
The Spiritual Safety Scale has been peer reviewed and published in the Journal of Religion and Health.
Two studies with over 800 participants
Study 1 (331 participants) validated the survey through Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) and reliability analysis (Chronbach's alpha). Three dimensions were identified through EFA: psychological safety, leadership, and culture.
Study 2 (491 participants) validated the three dimensions and 20 final survey items through Confirmatory Analysis (CFA), internal reliability (Chronbach's alpha), and convergent validity (Pearson's correlations) with psychological safety, negative religious coping, and PTSD.
Input from survivors and experts
Survivors of spiritual abuse and experts in the field helped shape the survey:
- Interviews with survivors provided the basis for 60 initial survey questions
- Experts in spiritual abuse rated all survey items prior to testing
- Round 1 participants gave feedback on problematic questions
- Experts in spiritual abuse rated the final 20 survey items as either definitely or possibly abusive
Strong statistical validity and reliability
Statistical analyses for the S-SAFE demonstrate high scores for reliability, factor structure, and convergent validity.
This means that S-SAFE measures what it intends to measure (psychological safety and risk of spiritual abuse), and it does so consistently across North American Christian contexts.
Ongoing research in cross-cultural contexts
We are continuing to research the use of the S-SAFE in non-Western churches and organizations.
Further validation efforts are underway.
