Using Private Prayer for Coping (UPPC): Its Role and Mechanisms in Adversities Facing Diverse Populations

Prayer is an important experience in the lives of many people. We introduce the Using Private Prayer for Coping (UPPC) scale, based on William James’s (1902/1958) concept of personal religious experiences as “a study of human nature” (p. 350) and prayer as an “inward communion or conversation with the power recognized as divine” (p. 352). The UPPC is a consciousness-based scale to assess the use of private prayer for coping in crisis or distress, involving: (a) belief in its importance, (b) faith in its efficacy based on previous experiences, and (c) intention to use this as a means to cope with distress. Three studies in samples with diverse demographic characteristics, belief patterns, and crisis contexts were used to establish the satisfactory psychometric properties of the UPPC, including its association with or predictive value for hedonic and eudaemonic wellbeing following traumatic events or collective disasters.