Investigation of Prospective Teachers' Spiritual Well-Beings and Life Satisfactions in Terms of Specified Variables

This study was conducted to investigate prospective teachers' spiritual well-beings and life satisfactions in terms of specified variables. 298 students from various departments of universities participated in the study. The Spiritual Well-Being Scale developed by Paloutzian and Ellison, and adapted to Turkish by Eksi and Kardas, the Life Satisfaction Scale developed by Diener et al. and translated and adapted to Turkish by Koker and a Personal Information Form prepared by the researcher were used in the study. This study was a descriptive study based on survey model. The study data were subjected to normality tests and analyzed accordingly. Mann Whitney U Test, Kruskal-Wallis H Test and Spearman Rho correlation coefficient were used to analyze the data. Results of the study, indicated that spiritual well-being levels of prospective teachers significantly varied by gender, year of study, field of study and educational status of father. Life satisfaction levels of prospective teachers significantly varied by field of study. Furthermore, there was a moderate positive correlation between total score for spiritual well-being and life satisfaction.


Introduction
Spirituality has been accepted as an important element in the science of psychology, particularly of well-being since the 1970s. The reason for that is the presence of spiritual needs in human life and that psychology, in turn, cannot remain indifferent to the effects of such needs as a research subject. Particularly the reason for the fact that spiritual well-being has become the subject of research recently is that World Health Organization recognizes spirituality, along with physical, psychological and social health, as an important indicator of health. Mohan et al. (2004) reported this as "the 37th World Health Assembly adopted a resolution that recommends a spiritual dimension to be added to the scope of health." "Maneviyat" (Spirituality) in Turkish, recognized as an indicator of health, is essentially a word of Arabic origin which means "something that can be perceived by senses, the opposite of material, and the unseen". According to the Turkish Language Dictionary, it means "-not material; spiritual things" or "-the backbone, moral". Myers et al. (2000) describe spirituality as an awareness of force or presence beyond the material structure of life, a human characteristic that involves an inherent sense of loyalty and integrity toward the universe, in which aspect they say spirituality is existential. Chandler et al. (1992) described spirituality based on an existentialist structure as an inherent capacity undertaken by a person to get over an existing point of focus and increasing love and knowledge associated with it. Zinnbauer et al. (1999) describe spirituality as proximity to God and interconnectedness with other living beings. When literature about spirituality and religion is searched, it'll be seen that they have been used as if they have the same meaning in many studies. However, Bash (2004), who described the concept of spirituality as nontheistic, theistic and the form between nontheistic and theistic, brought a different perspective to this discussion. Sirin (2019) provided a different perspective to this complexity by suggesting that it's disputable to conceptualize a structure as religious or spiritual and that spirituality can be addressed as a process of searching for the sacred and that this search, which is a manifestation of man's spiritual needs, might be within religious borders or cover a broader process.
Being well, feeling well, being satisfied, the feeling of satisfaction, being happy in the most general sense, can be addressed as a basic need. Naturally, being well or well-being in the presence of humanity is not a structure that can be addressed through a single dimension. Well-being is a structure with changing criteria, including a person's status, position, the person concerned, personality, economic status, the culture and the religion recognized. It should be known that reaching/finding happiness has been the engagement of mankind since very old times and considered the most important source of motivation in terms of their actions (Demirbulat & Avcikurt, 2015).
Spirituality is a structure that can be addressed as a dimension of well-being. Many descriptions have been made about spirituality; a commonly recognized description is Frame's (2002), which is a person's search for meaning and value in his/her own life. Seaward (1991) also embraced the value system included in this description. Jung (1933), a major proponent of psychology, argued that almost all problems of men are within the spiritual field and they can only be solved by realizing spiritual awakening. When the findings of investigations conducted after this opinion of Jung's are considered generally, the concept of spiritual well-being has been reported to affect life in many areas ranging from spirituality, mental health, that a person is in harmony with his/her surroundings to life and his/her attitudes toward moral life.
One of the important points is the terminological difference between spirituality and religion. Particularly in Turkey, religion is used as spirituality. However, within the general conceptual framework of social sciences, there are two approaches, being constant and functional approaches. In religionism; constant approach involves a power and a sacred being and beliefs, feelings and behaviors of the human being in interaction with these two, whereas functional approach involves the religion focusing on service functionalities in a person's life. Coyle (2008) defines religion as a corporate structure which is particularly taught and learned, which sets forth submission as a condition precedent among the presence of certain rules, whereas Dierendonck and Mohan (2006) describe spirituality as a vital inner attitude in which a direct bond is made with those sacred ones. Opatz (1986) defined spiritual well-being as willingness to seek the meaning and purpose of human existence, questioning everything, and the comprehension of abstract things that cannot be explained or understood easily.
All these can be said to affect well-being in an integral manner. The extent of such effect can be considered to be definitely influenced by people, culture, daily events, and situations. Considering that all these assumptions are inside a whole and affect life satisfaction, which can be considered a whole, it is possible to find out how much they affect the results of the current study.
Life satisfaction can be considered as satisfaction with the entire life (Diener et al., 1985;Veenhoven, 1996). There's a consensus on this subject among many authors; rather than being a structure recognized as a single truth only, life satisfaction is a state where a person's positive feelings toward his/her experiences in all areas of life outweigh his/her negative feelings. Vara (1999), contributed to the field on this subject by describing life satisfaction as a state of quantity in general, in which the total of a person's pleasant feelings in his/her daily life is more than the total of his/her negative feelings as well as a state of being well from various perspectives such as happiness, morale, etc. Although there's no full consensus on a definition, there are many definitions that emphasize similar ideas put forward on this subject. Among these definitions, emphasis has been placed on the high amount of positive feelings and the low amount of negative feelings, and things affecting life satisfaction such as age, gender, marital status, job, socio-economic status, religion, cognitive structures and culture. Considering theories explaining life satisfaction, there's a wide range of approaches. Prominent theories focus on reaching a certain point, or pleasure and pain, or efficiency, top-down and bottom-up theory, or judgment.
This study aimed to address the relationship between spiritual well-being levels and life satisfaction of prospective teachers. Teachers are very important for students either in terms of being a role model, according to social learning theory, or formation and continuation of behavior, according to behavioral theory, or their effect on the formation of people's schemes, according to cognitive theory. If there's a positive relationship between teachers' levels of well-being and life satisfaction, this positivity will have positive effects on their students in the educational environment. Therefore, this study is important in terms of the results it'll reveal about prospective teachers as well as the fact that it investigates variation of spiritual living level and life satisfaction by various demographical variables.

Research Model
This study used a general survey model to investigate the relationship between spiritual well-being and life satisfaction. Survey model is a research model that aims to describe a past or present situation as it is and tries to define the subject, event or object with its own conditions (Karasar, 2015).

Study Group
Information on the frequency and percentage distribution of the participants according to the variables is given in the table.

Data Collection Tools
Demographic Information Form: The personal information form prepared by the researcher was used to collect information about the participants, including gender, year of study, education status of parents, parental attitudes.
Spiritual Well-Being Scale: The validity study in Turkey of the Spiritual Well-Being Scale, first developed by Paloutzian and Ellison (1982), was performed by Eksi and Kardas (2017). The scale is a five-point Likert type scale consisting of total of 29 items, and the answers are as I totally disagree-I totally agree (1-5). It contains three sub-dimensions: transcendence, harmony with nature and anomie. Cronbach's Alpha values for transcendence was .95, for harmony with nature was .86 and for anomie was.85, respectively, and the total value was .88. The model fit indexes were ( 2/sd = 4.11, RMSEA = .06, SRMR = .50, NFI = .90, CFI = .92). Receiving higher scores from the scale indicates higher level of spiritual well-being (Eksi & Kardas, 2017). Cronbach's Alpha values for transcendence was .89, for harmony with nature was .87 and for anomie was .87 for this sample. It's clear that those who had a high score from the scale have a high level of spiritual well-being and those who have a low score has a low level of spiritual well-being. In this study, Cronbach's Alpha value was .88.
Life Satisfaction Scale: The Satisfaction with Life Scale, developed by Diener et al. (1985), was translated and adapted to Turkish by Koker (1991). The reliability studies of the scale demonstrated that test-retest reliability for three weeks was r=.85, and item-test correlations were in the range of .71 and .80. Yetim (1991) indicated corrected split half value was 0.75 and Kuder Richardson-20 value was 0,79 for the scale. Larsen and his colleagues (1983) indicated all of the items had significant impact on general factor (Yetim, 1993). Yetim (1993) also confirmed the similar findings for Turkish version of the scale. In this study, Cronbach's Alpha value was .83.

Collection of Data
The scales were applied at different times with an interval of one week by the researcher to the participants, namely the prospective teachers studying at Erzincan Binali Yildirim University, identified by appropriate sampling method. Before the scales were applied, the participants were informed about the aim of the research and how the scale would be applied for each of the scale. The application of the scales was based on the principle of volunteering. The total number of data, which was initially 350, decreased to 298 due to invalid data (incomplete ticking, incomplete answers, not being able to understand the questions, etc.). Applications took approximately 15-20 minutes.

Data Analysis
In the study, the relationships between spiritual well-being levels and life satisfactions of prospective teachers were identified as well as variation of these variables in sub-groups. Normality of data was analyzed using Kolmogorov -Smirnov and Shapiro -Wilk test. The results of normality analyses are shown in table 2. The normality test results for spiritual well-being and life satisfaction indicated that the data were not normally distributed. Therefore, Mann Whitney-U and Kruskal-Wallis tests were used for comparisons. The relationship between dependent variables was analyzed by calculating Spearman Rho Correlation Coefficient. Also, the effect size coefficients which help us to determine significance of the difference in group comparisons were calculated. The effect size for Mann -Whitney U were denoted by "r" and calculated by the formula IZI / with r ≥, 10 indicating "low", r ≥, 30 indicating "moderate", r ≥, 50 indicating "large" effect size (Aron et al, 2014;Connolly, 2007;Corder & Foreman, 2009). Also to determine effect sizes for Kruskal-Wallis H tests, Cohen`s d classification was used with d ≥, 10 indicating "low", d ≥, 25 indicating "moderate" and d ≥, 40 indicating "high" effect size (Cohen, 1988). " As a result of the comparison of Gender groups in terms of Spiritual Well-Being and Life Satisfaction Scores by Mann-Whitney U Test; there was a statistically significant difference between spiritual well-being scores by gender (U=8123.500, p<0.05), whereas there was no statistically significant difference in life satisfaction scores by gender (U=9096.000, p>0.05). Mean spiritual well-being rank score of females (157.28) was higher than that of males (133.12). According the table, the effect size for difference between males and females was .13. It indicates there is a small difference between males and females' spiritual well-being scores.   153,20

Findings
The table shows Kruskal-Wallis test results of the scores related to spiritual well-being and life satisfactions of students whose mothers have different educational levels. According to the analysis results, there was no statistically significant difference between spiritual well-being scores (X 2 =7.539, p>0.05), whereas there was a statistically significant difference between life satisfaction scores (X 2 =10.681, p<0.05). When the effect size of this difference is examined, using the Cohen (1998) effect size classification, there is a moderate effect size (Cohen's d=.36) of mother`s education level on life satisfaction. As a result of Mann-Whitney U test performed to identify the reason for the significant variation in life satisfaction scores, the students whose mothers have a high school degree had higher life satisfaction scores than the students whose mothers are illiterate. With Bonferroni correction, the results indicate there is not a statistically significant difference between life satisfaction scores (p>0.01). 130,83 The table shows Kruskal-Wallis test results of the scores related to spiritual well-being and life satisfactions of students whose fathers have different educational levels. According to the analysis results, there was a statistically significant difference between spiritual well-being scores (X 2 =13.114, p<0.05), whereas there was no statistically significant difference between life satisfaction scores (X 2 =8.514, p>0.05). The table shows Kruskal-Wallis test results of the scores related to spiritual well-being and life satisfactions of students with various parental attitudes. According to the analysis results, there was no statistically significant difference between spiritual well-being scores (X 2 =5.056, p>0.05) and life satisfaction scores (X 2 =2.830, p>0.05).

Life Satisfaction p
Spiritual Well-Being .442 ** .000 Table 9 shows the results of Spearman Rho correlation coefficient performed between spiritual well-being scores and life satisfaction scores of the university students. The result of the analysis showed a positive statistically significant relationship (r=0.442, p<0.05). The change for the spiritual well-being scores of the participants and the life satisfaction scores is at the same direction and there is a moderate correlation spiritual well-being and life satisfaction. As spiritual well-being scores increase, the life satisfaction scores increase as well.

Discussion
The study showed that there was a significant relationship between gender and spiritual well-being. This finding is in agreement with the results of the study by Yilmaz (2019) indicating the female students' spiritual well-being scores were higher than male students' scores. Similarly, the studies by Kardas (2017) and Hendricks-Ferguson (2006) reported that females' spiritual well-being levels are higher than males'. In Turkey, parents are more protective toward girls than boys (Dokumaci, 2016;Aynur, 2020), in addition to this, Turkey is mostly a Muslim country and girls are raised to be more conservative than boys (Demirkanoglu, 2017), given spirituality is intertwined with being religious, it is expected that females have higher spiritual well-being than males. However, it is important to note that Toprak (2018) found results in favor of males in the phenomenological dimension of spirituality, whereas he conclude that gender does not cause any difference in other dimensions. Also, in contrast to the results obtained in this study, Kizilirmak (2015), Sirin (2019), Gursu and Ay (2018), Gomez and Fisher (2005) conclude that gender does not cause any significant difference in spiritual well-being level.
In the current study, no significant difference was found between the life satisfaction levels by the gender variable. This result is in good agreement with previous result reported in the literature (Aydinli, 2019;Demirel, 2019;Karaman, 2019); however, it differs from the results of previous research by Incekara (2018), Izgis (2019), Makas (2019) and Yildirici-Titiz (2019). All these studies identified that gender causes a significant difference in favor of the females. The difference between the results could be due to sampling differences as this study included a sample of participants with college education.
In view of the year of study variable, according to the analysis results, there was no statistically significant difference between spiritual well-being scores and life satisfaction scores. It is possible that overall freshman, sophomore, junior and senior year did not make any significant difference in the participants` lives which caused a significant change in the participants` spiritual well-being and life satisfaction. It is important to note that the results are based on mean scores, therefore, the statement is not conclusive for all of the participants. When ranks are considered, the students in 1st year of study had the highest spiritual well-being levels, whereas the students in 3rd year of study had the lowest. When the same thing was considered in terms of life satisfaction, a result completely opposite of spiritual well-being was obtained, namely the students in 3rd year of study had the highest mean score, whereas the students in 1st year of study had the lowest mean score. When these results are compared with the relevant literature, there are studies which support this finding; however, the study by Incekara (2018) reported that the students in 2nd year of study had higher life satisfaction than the students in other years of study.
In view of the variable of field of study, there was no difference for spiritual well-being levels, however, there were significant differences in terms of life satisfaction. From the perspective of spiritual well-being, the students from the department of art teaching had the highest score, whereas the students from the department of music teaching had the lowest score. Considering life satisfaction, although the students studying PCG had the highest mean scores, prospective Turkish teachers had the lowest ranking. Considering for which departments the significance of life satisfaction varied, again the students studying PCG were found to have higher satisfaction levels than prospective Turkish teachers. When a literature search was conducted, there was no study that compared these departments. One explanation for the results is that, in Turkey, prospective teachers take a general exam to work as a teacher for ministry of education in Turkey which hires most of the prospective teachers (Recepoglu et al., 2016); therefore, The PCG students have higher chance of being hired than other majors (i.e. art, music, and Turkish). This might be one reason PCG students have higher levels of life satisfaction.
When the results of variables which addressed the educational levels of parents were considered, the educational level of mother did not relate with the prospective teachers' spiritual well-being, however, it did so by their life satisfaction. When the rankings were considered, those whose mothers are illiterate had the highest mean rank in terms of spiritual well-being scores, whereas those whose mothers have a university degree or a higher degree had the lowest mean rank. In terms of rankings, those whose mothers have a high school degree had the highest mean rank in life satisfaction and those who mothers are illiterate had the lowest rank. These differences were statistically significant. Contrary to the finding obtained in the current study, one reported in the literature found no difference between life satisfactions by the educational status of the mother (Incekara, 2018). It is possible that mothers with high school education were more motivated to provide more emotional support to their children during college education which led the participants to have higher level of life satisfaction as the females have less schooling than males in Turkey (Duman, 2010).
When the data relating to the educational level of the father were examined, there was a significant difference in terms of spiritual well-being levels, whereas there was no significant difference in terms of life satisfaction, for the prospective teachers. In terms of results and rankings, the students whose fathers are illiterate had the highest mean rank in terms of spiritual well-being and the students whose fathers have a university degree or a higher degree had the lowest mean rank. When a literature search was made based on these results, no study investigating these variables was found. It is possible that fathers with low levels of education tend to follow traditional life style which is mostly affected by religiosity (Acevedo et al., 2015). Given the spirituality is closely related with religiosity in Turkey, it is expected fathers with low level of education raise their kids with religious life style that led higher level of spirituality/ religiosity among participants.
In terms of life satisfaction, the students whose fathers have a secondary school degree had the highest mean rank and the students whose fathers are illiterate had the lowest mean rank. This result was not in agreement with the findings of Incekara's (2018) study, which reported that the students whose fathers have a university degree had higher life satisfaction levels than the other students. It is possible that fathers with higher level of education tend to have more understanding towards their offspring's with college education (Ozel & Zelyurt, 2016).
Parental attitudes were not found to be related to either spiritual well-being or life satisfaction of the prospective teachers. When mean ranks were considered, the students with tolerant parental attitude had the highest mean spiritual well-being, whereas those with democratic parental attitude had the lowest mean spiritual well-being. When a literature search was done based on these results, no study investigating these variables was found. Similarly, in terms of life satisfaction, the students with tolerant parental attitude had the highest mean, whereas those with negligent parental attitude had the lowest mean. When these results are compared with those in the literature, Demirel's (2019) study reported that parental attitudes significantly differed in terms of student's life satisfaction. The literature is replete with parental attitudes and various life outcomes such as life satisfaction and spiritual well-being (e.g. Aydin, 2018;Izgis, 2019;Makas, 2019). However, this study found no significant relationship between parental attitudes and life satisfaction and spiritual well-being. This study used demographic information form in which the participants were asked to report their parental attitudes. It is possible that the participants` report regarding their parental attitudes were not accurate leading no significant relationship between parental attitudes and life satisfaction and spiritual wellbeing.
In the final section of the study, a positive significant relationship was found between spiritual well-being and life satisfaction. This finding is in agreement with the results obtained by Lou (2015) and Dami et al. (2018). Furthermore, though not directly, Holder et al.'s (2016) study concluded that spirituality reasonably predicts the variations in life satisfaction. In addition, Kamya (2000) reported that spiritual well-being strongly predicts the components of psychological well-being such as psychological resilience and self-respect. Here, it's necessary to note that both spiritual well-being and life satisfaction are positive constructs and are perceived as a structure expected to be related to each other. The current study verified this perception.

Conclusion
This study investigated the relationship between spiritual well-being and life satisfaction and some demographic variables including gender, year of education, parental education program of study and also parental attitudes are related with spiritual well-being and life satisfaction. The results indicated female participants had significantly higher level of spiritual well-being than male participants. Year of study did not have any significant relationship with spiritual well-being and life satisfaction. Participants majored in PCG had significantly higher level of life satisfaction than participants majored in art, music and Turkish. Participants whose mother had high school education had higher level of life satisfaction than participants whose mother had lower level of education (i.e. primary school or illiterate) and participants whose father had secondary school education had higher level of spiritual well-being than participants whose father had lower level of education (i.e. primary school or illiterate). Lastly, the parental attitudes were not significantly associated with spiritual well-being and life satisfaction. There was a significant moderate correlation between spiritual well-being and life satisfaction. Overall, the results indicated that it is possible that the traditional life style, parental support and cultural and social variables might have significant impact on the participants` spiritual well-being and life satisfaction.

Recommendations
The research indicated that there is a significant relationship between gender and the spiritual well-being of teacher candidates. In order to eliminate this gender-related difference in teaching social roles and to become a role model, it is recommended to organize psycho-education programs and exemplary parent education programs on gender awareness. However, more research is needed to investigate the relationship between gender, parental education, and psychological well-being. The relationship between gender and spiritual well-being can be investigated together with other variables such as attachment style, and parent education level. However, it is important to note that, self-report criteria about parental attitudes were additionally used in this study; further studies can use psychometrically verified measures of parental attitudes.
The research results revealed that there is a significant difference between the department variable and life satisfaction. Considering that this difference may be related to career preferences, more effective career guidance studies can be conducted for pre-university university candidates. As for teacher candidates, interventions that increase professional awareness regarding the department they study can be carried out as well. However, more studies are needed to examine the relationship between department of study, teacher candidates' moral well-being and life satisfaction.
The results indicated significant differences between mother's education level and life satisfaction, and between father's education level and spiritual well-being. However, further studies can be conducted to examine the relationship between parents' education levels and spiritual well-being and life satisfaction; and parent education programs can be organized using the findings of the research.
Lastly, the results indicated a positive significant relationship between spiritual well-being and life satisfaction. It may be recommended to conduct more studies on factors related to spiritual well-being and life satisfaction such as psychological resilience, psychological well-being and self-esteem.

Limitations
This study was limited to 298 students studying at Erzincan Binali Yildirim University. In order to eliminate the limitation of research results on this subject, it's important to conduct research on this subject with a higher number of prospective teachers from a wider selection of universities.