Home economists’ views and perceptions of spiritual health and wellbeing : a collective affirmation statement

Home economists articulate relationships between home economics and spiritual health and wellbeing in various ways. This paper focuses on some similarities in spiritual discourses. Home economists from twenty-one countries responded to an anonymous online survey that invited cross-cultural views and perceptions about spirituality. Bricolage strategies including qualitative descriptive statistics, elements of constructivist grounded theory, content and discourse analysis were used to establish themes in the data and enabled analysis of home economists’ language-in-use relating to spirituality. Shared meaning themes were located and used to construct a collective affirmation statement. The statement confirmed some ‘essential element’ categories of home economics including individuals, families and communities, the natural environment, and local and global citizenship to have relationships with spiritual discourse. Prominent spiritual discourse concepts emerged such as: uniqueness of the individual, respect for diversity, service to others, hope, meaning and purpose in life, family relationships, and community spirit. For the participants in this study, home economics education contributes positively to spiritual wellbeing.