Modeling spiritual health based on religious orientation and life expectancy with mediation of discomfort tolerance and the moderating role of gender in students

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

1 PHD Student in General Psychology, Department of psychology and Educational Sciences, Central Tehran Branch, Islamic Azad University, Tehran, Iran.

2 Assistant Proffesor, Department of Educational Sciences, Central Tehran Branch, Islamic Azad University, Tehran, Iran.

Abstract

The main objective of the study was to model spiritual health based on religious orientation and life expectancy with the mediation of distress tolerance and the moderating role of gender in students. This study is an applied study with a positivist paradigm, an inductive approach, a survey strategy, and a descriptive-correlational method, and its data were collected in the field during the period (2024-2025). The statistical population consisted of 4000 students of Islamic Azad University, Central Tehran Branch, who were selected using the stratified random sampling method according to gender (male and female), level of education (bachelor, master and doctorate), and field of study (humanities, basic sciences, technical and engineering). The sample size was estimated to be 352 people in proportion to the population based on the Morgan table. The research instruments were Ellison's (1982) Spiritual Health Questionnaire, Schneider's (1991) Life Expectancy, Allport's (1950) Religious Orientation, and Simmons' (2005) Discomfort Tolerance Questionnaire, whose reliability based on Cronbach's alpha is 0.9, 0.72, 0.73, and 0.89, respectively. Data analysis included descriptive statistics, and structural equation modeling and Smart pls4 software were used in the inferential section. The research findings indicate that the t value for the direct and indirect effects is smaller than (t=1.96). Therefore, the research hypotheses that the gender variable moderates (strongly or weakly) the direct effect of religious orientation and life expectancy on students' spiritual health, and that the gender variable moderates the indirect effect of religious orientation and life expectancy on students' spiritual health through mediation of students' distress tolerance are rejected with 95% confidence. The numerical value of SRMR in both groups is less than 0.08 and NFI is close to 1 and the research model has a good fit. The result is that there is no significant difference in the effectiveness of the above psychological items in the two groups of men and women.

Keywords


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  • Receive Date: 15 January 2025
  • Revise Date: 15 February 2025
  • Accept Date: 25 May 2025
  • First Publish Date: 22 June 2025
  • Publish Date: 22 June 2025