Table 4.

Correlations among the Importance of Spirituality and the Presence of Spiritual Pain and Coping, Symptoms, and Quality of Life in Latin American Cancer Patients

	Importance of spirituality		Spiritual pain
	Spearman correlation coefficient (r)	p a	Spearman correlation coefficient (r)	p a
Characteristics
Age	−0.09502	0.0928	0.00919	0.8721
CAGEc	−0.18664	0.0010	−0.00813	0.8874
Karnofsky performance status	0.09855	0.0884	0.09855	0.0884
Spirituality/religiosity questionsb
Do you consider yourself a Spiritual person?	0.55096	<0.0001	0.02140	0.7088
Do you consider yourself a religious person?	0.30484	<0.0001	0.10213	0.0740
How important is religion in your life?	0.79892	<0.0001	−0.08768	0.1240
Is spirituality/religiosity a source of strength and comfort to you?	0.73380	<0.0001	−0.11041	0.0529
Does spirituality/religiosity help you cope with your illness?	0.66303	<0.0001	−0.08221	0.1534
Does spirituality/religiosity help your family member/caregiver cope with your illness?	0.39864	<0.0001	−0.11901	0.0378
Spirituality/religiosity has a positive effect on your physical symptoms	0.42067	<0.0001	−0.12267	0.0311
Spirituality/religiosity has a positive effect on your emotional symptoms	0.16577	0.0035	−0.03091	0.5914
ESAS-FSd symptoms
Pain	−0.01786	0.7541	0.13067	0.0225
Fatigue	−0.03354	0.5576	0.21341	0.0002
Nausea	−0.01260	0.8257	0.16483	0.0040
Depression	−0.05394	0.3470	0.33295	<0.0001
Anxiety	−0.07520	0.1881	0.37245	<0.0001
Drowsiness	−0.06987	0.2207	0.19610	0.0006
Shortness of breath	−0.15538	0.0063	0.18763	0.0010
Appetite	−0.08485	0.1360	0.13268	0.0205
Sleep	−0.11688	0.0397	0.17968	0.0016
Well-being	−0.08312	0.1443	0.23937	<0.0001
Financial distress	0.03991	0.4846	0.24681	<0.0001
Worry	−0.14616	0.0102	0.38936	<0.0001
CES-De	−0.11754	0.0374	0.32925	<0.0001
Spiritual well-being/QOL (FACIT-Sp-Ex)f	0.44064	<0.0001	−0.21641	0.0002
Meaning/peace subscale	0.20023	0.0004	−0.18825	0.0010
Faith subscale	0.58095	<0.0001	−0.15392	0.0075
COPE behaviors/activities
Denial	−0.09893	0.0825	0.18687	0.0011
Behavioral disengagement	−0.15799	0.0054	0.13974	0.0148
Venting	−0.20151	0.0004	0.25714	<0.0001
Positive reframing	0.09218	0.1058	−0.15252	0.0077
Religion	0.51003	<0.0001	−0.23765	<0.0001
Self-blame	−0.13088	0.0214	0.17457	0.0023
Humor	0.11449	0.0443	−0.02327	0.6861
Acceptance	−0.02878	0.6143	−0.09707	0.0911
Active coping	−0.01890	0.7407	−0.13618	0.0175
Positive RCOPE strategies	0.52438	<0.0001	−0.15780	0.0057
Negative RCOPE strategies	−0.00661	0.9083	0.27141	<0.0001

^a Spearman correlation. Bold indicates statistical significance at p < 0.05. The questions used to correlate with other items listed in the table were “How important is Spirituality/Religiosity is your life?” Are you having

“Spiritual Pain?”

^b Participants rated items on a scale of 0 to 10 (0 = not at all and 10 = very much, the most important).

^c CAGE (Questions for screening alcoholism, used to evaluate risk of chemical coping)

^d ESAS-FS items were assessed on a scale from 0 to 10 (0 = “no symptom” and 10 = “worst possible symptom”).

^e A score of 16 or higher was used as the cutoff point for high depressive symptoms.

^f FACIT-Sp-Ex. Higher scores indicate greater importance of spiritual/religious aspects of QOL.

CES-D, Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale; COPE, coping strategies; FACIT-Sp-Ex, Functional Assessment of Chronic Illness Therapy-Spiritual Well-Being, Expanded version; QOL, quality of life; RCOPE, religious coping