Primary validation of Children Spiritual Intelligence Scale in a sample of Latvian elementary school pupils

ABSTRACT The paper aims to describe the development of the Children Spiritual Intelligence Scale (CSIS), focusing on the stage of primary validation of the scale. Based on the five components of the theoretical model (Creation and awareness of personal meaning, Self-understanding, Mastery of self-control, Awareness of personal authenticity and uniqueness, and Social mastery), a 63-item scale with validated content was developed to measure children’s spiritual intelligence. The validation sample consisted of 200 pupils from grades 1–4 representing comprehensive education schools situated in different regions of Latvia. The exploration resulted with the psychometric properties of CSIS, showing the item difficulty and discrimination indices of items, interpretation of the factorial structure and internal reliability of the scale. The final set of 23 CSIS items, measuring children spiritual intelligence in a framework of a one-factor model with four included subcomponents, showed acceptable psychometric properties, enabling to pursue the next steps of scale development.