ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Cultural Psychology
Real-World Evidence for Clergy Well-Being: Developing a Culturally Grounded Self-Screening Tool to Promote Sustainable Mental Health Outcomes
Wen-Cheng Li 1
Yu-Ting Chin 1
I-Ling Ling 2
Chien-Hung Lee 1
1. Kaohsiung Medical University, Kaohsiung, Taiwan
2. National Chiayi University, Chiayi, Taiwan
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
Abstract
Clergy well-being is a critical yet underexamined issue in occupational health psychology, particularly within Chinese cultural contexts where collectivist values, role obligations, and mental health stigma shape the experience and expression of psychological distress. This study develops and validates a culturally grounded self-screening tool to assess clergy well-being (CWB) and work-related psychological health (WPH) among Chinese-speaking clergy. Drawing on a multidimensional framework, CWB is conceptualized as comprising subjective well-being (SWB), psychological well-being (PWB), and spiritual well-being (SpWB), while WPH is modeled as a dual-spectrum construct encompassing engagement, stability, fatigue, and burnout. Two survey studies conducted with Taiwanese clergy (Study 1: N = 150; Study 2: N = 437) supported a three-factor CWB structure and a four-factor WPH structure, demonstrating strong reliability, construct validity, and measurement invariance across gender. Hierarchical regression and structural equation modeling revealed that SWB was the strongest predictor across all WPH outcomes, while PWB and SpWB contributed incremental explanatory power, particularly for positive occupational states. By integrating cultural and spiritual dimensions into occupational assessment, this study offers a validated, culturally sensitive self-screening tool and advances understanding of clergy well-being in collectivist settings.
Summary
Keywords
Chinese clergy, clergy well-being (CWB), Psychological well-being (PWB), scale development, spiritual well-being (SpWB), subjective well-being (SWB), work-related psychological health (WPH)
Received
12 September 2025
Accepted
18 February 2026
Copyright
© 2026 Li, Chin, Ling and Lee. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
*Correspondence: I-Ling Ling; Chien-Hung Lee
Disclaimer
All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.