Inward, Outward, Upward Prayer: Scale Reliability and Validation

This study provides support for a model that conceptualizes prayers as the means to establish cognitive connections in three directions: inward (self‐connection); outward (human‐human connection); and upward (human‐divine connections). A confirmatory factor analysis demonstrates a single general prayer factor divisible into three subfactors that are in turn comprised of eight discrete scales. Measures of general religiosity, the need for structure, religious styles of coping, well‐being, life‐satisfaction, and belief in the paranormal provide evidence of convergent and divergent validity for the theory of prayer as a mechanism for inward, outward, and upward connections.