Preoccupation with Devotional Songs and Spiritual Well-Being of Religious Individuals: The Mediating and Moderating Effects of Religiosity and Emotionally Adaptive Functions of Music
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The manuscript has a number of strengths. Its employs an international sample, which is an addition to this literature. The data analysis techniques are appropriate to the hypotheses stated. It is clearly and effectively presented. Some minor editing is needed. Specifically, edits are needed on the following lines:
Line 31: First sentence should read "Music is so important to religion that..."
Line 39: The sentence that begins "Anderson (1990) explored the standard life of a Christian and..." is unclear. What is the "standard life" of a Christian. This should be clarified.
Line 41: The sentence that begins "However, one of the important..." would read more logically if it is moved to the following paragraph and used to begin the paragraph.
Lines 48-52: The sentence that begins "Although an experimental study..." should read "Although an experimental study...applying sacred music vocals and..."
Line 148: The authors note "In this study, we used only the subscales for strong emotional experiences, anger regulation, and anxiety regulation. Why were only these three chosen?
Lines 197-199: The sentence that begins "The results revealed..." Should read "The results revealed...did not significantly influence intrinsic religiosity..."
My biggest concern with the manuscript at present is the lack of theory. What has prior research argued about why music influences spiritual or religious or other forms of well being? What theoretical explanations have been offered, whether by psychologists, social psychologists, or others? The authors need to address this, and to use it where appropriate to contextualize their findings.
Finally, the title is awkward and needs to be replaced with a clearer title that will more clearly. For example, a possible title might be something like "Preoccupation with Devotional Songs and Spiritual Well Being of Religious Individuals: The Mediating and Moderating Effects of Religiosity and the Adaptive Functions of Music.
Author Response
Thank you very much for your comments to improve the quality of this articles.
The revised parts were marked in red, and we included the page and line of the revised part.
Response to Reviewer 1 Comments
Point 1. Line 31: First sentence should read "Music is so important to religion that..."
Response 1: Thank you for your advice. As you advised, we revised the sentence. (Line 31)
Music is so important to religion that it is hard to think of religion without music.
Point 2. Line 39: The sentence that begins "Anderson (1990) explored the standard life of a Christian and..." is unclear. What is the "standard life" of a Christian. This should be clarified.
Response 2: We deleted the part you mentioned as below because we thought it was not necessary to state it. (Line 39)
Anderson (1990) emphasized the message of the scriptures that permeated the hymns of the three Protestant denominations in the 1980s.
Point 3. Line 41: The sentence that begins "However, one of the important..." would read more logically if it is moved to the following paragraph and used to begin the paragraph.
Response 3: Thank you for your advice. As you advised, I revised the sentence as below.
However, one of the important reasons for using music in religion may be its psychologically adaptive function. (Line 41).
Point 4. Lines 48-52: The sentence that begins "Although an experimental study..." should read "Although an experimental study...applying sacred music vocals and..."
Response 4: As you advised, we revised the sentence. (Line 49-53)
Although an experimental study with individuals who lost their family members to cancer attempted to examine whether sacred music could improve their spiritual well-being, there was no statistically significant difference in spiritual well-being between the group applying sacred music vocals and the control group (Silva et al. 2017).
Point 5. Line 148: The authors note "In this study, we used only the subscales for strong emotional experiences, anger regulation, and anxiety regulation. Why were only these three chosen?
Response 5: Thank you for your comment. We inserted the reason for including only three subscales into the manuscript as follows. (Line 162-163)
In this study, we used the subscales for strong emotional experiences, anger regulation, and anxiety regulation, because only these subscales are emotionally adaptive functions of music.
Point 6. Lines 197-199: The sentence that begins "The results revealed..." Should read "The results revealed...did not significantly influence intrinsic religiosity..."
Response 6: Thank you for your detail correction. We corrected it as follows. (Line 216-217)
The results revealed that preoccupation with devotional songs positively influenced intrinsic religiosity (B = 1.203, p < 0.001), but the emotionally adaptive functions of music did not significantly influence intrinsic religiosity in this model (B = −0.018, n.s).
Point 7. My biggest concern with the manuscript at present is the lack of theory. What has prior research argued about why music influences spiritual or religious or other forms of well being?
Response 7: Thank you for your comment. That’s true that there is the lack of theoretical background because the relationship between the variables examined in this study has not been studied much. Therefore, we tried to present previous studies and rationale that can support the relationship between variables. So we supplemented a little more as below.
Lipe (2002) emphasized that music plays an important role in promoting spirituality. Spirituality as an innate construct that can be fluidly aligned with music, emphasizing that human spiritual experiences are amplified by musical experiences (Potvin and Argue, 2014). Devotional songs focuses on praising God, it has been found empirically that praising God in worship raises religious individuals’ spiritual well-being (Tshabalala et al. 2010). (Line 44-49)
Previous studies have shown that there is a significant correlation between religiosity and spiritual well-being (Jun and Suh 2012; Madrigal et al 2020). Because religious orientation is to fulfill inner spiritual needs, religiosity can improve spiritual well-being (Oracion and Madrigal 2019). (Line 67-70)
Point 8. The title is awkward and needs to be replaced with a clearer title that will more clearly. For example, a possible title might be something like "Preoccupation with Devotional Songs and Spiritual Well Being of Religious Individuals: The Mediating and Moderating Effects of Religiosity and the Adaptive Functions of Music.
Response 8: As you advised, we revised the title as you suggested. (Line 2-4)
Preoccupation with Devotional Songs and Spiritual Well Being of Religious Individuals: The Mediating and Moderating Effects of Religiosity and the Adaptive Functions of Music
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
First of all, thank you so much for inviting me to review the paper “Mediating Effect of Religiosity Moderated by the Emotionally Adaptive Functions of Music on Preoccupation with Devotional Songs and Spiritual Well-Being of Religious Individuals”. An interesting study, wherein the effects of devotional songs is analyzed.
Introduction – should include some definition of “preoccupation” with devotional songs prior to line 55.
Although this is presented in lines 60 onwards, might try to re-structure the two paragraphs.
The background for the theoretical moderated mediation should be further strengthen. Should note how come, mediation is established between the relationship of devotional songs and religiosity, while not on the rest of the relationships (eg: devotional songs to spiritual well-being; religiosity to spiritual well-being)
Method section – should be improve for clarity
Selection/inclusion criteria? Scope in data collection/localities? Urban or rural?
Instrument – originally Korean? Or translated, this should be stated and clarify.
Are the instrument not specific to certain religion, this should be noted.
Were control variables introduced? Why not? (there might be some differences between in the practice of devotional songs with respect to difference religions)
Looking into the background demographics of the sample, why were t-test on genders, or ANOVA accomplished for group comparisons.
Do you need to performed CFA on the spiritual well-being and religiosity? Cronbach alpha might not be enough.
Authors noted that in line 307
“This finding suggests that even religious individuals who do not use the emotionally adaptive functions of music can experience spiritual well-being by acquiring intrinsic religiosity when they are preoccupied with devotional songs” – provide additional practical implications
In sum, the paper is quite interesting, although the moderated mediation is not that supported, the paper does bring to light some insights into the role of devotional songs in the relationships between religiosity and spiritual well-being.
Author Response
Response to Reviewer 2 Comments
Thank you very much for your comments to improve the quality of this articles. The revised parts were marked in red, and we included the page and line of the revised part. Thank you again for cheering us that this study is valuable despite the limitations of the study.
Point 1. Introduction – should include some definition of “preoccupation” with devotional songs prior to line 55.
Response 1: Thank you for your comment. As you advised, we include definition of “preoccupation with devotional songs” as follows. If the word ‘preoccupation’ seems inappropriate, please recommend another term and we will change it. (Line 61-63)
Preoccupation with devotional songs can be defined as religious individuals’ immersion in devotional religious music such as hymn, psalmody, chant, and anthem, and its permeation to their lives.
Point 2. Selection/inclusion criteria? Scope in data collection/localities? Urban or rural?
Response 2: Thank you for your comment. As you advised, we added an explanation of the participants' conditions as below. (Line 107-108)
So, the participants were adults who reported having a religion when they registered with an online research company across nationwide Korea.
Point 3. Instrument – originally Korean? Or translated, this should be stated and clarify.
Response 3: Instruments for measuring religiosity and spiritual well-being are tools that has been frequently used in Korea. But, we translated adaptive Functions of Music Listening scale (FML). So, as you advised, we included the explanation of the translation procedure as follows. (Line 163-167)
We translated this scale into Korean, and revised it with reverse translation by a bilingual Korean American. We translated this scale into Korean, and revised through reverse translation by a bilingual Korean-American and with reviews of a psychologist and a composer who earned doctoral degrees in English-speaking countries.
Point 4. Are the instrument not specific to certain religion, this should be noted.
Response 4: Thank you for your comment. The I/E-R and the SWBS are measures that cover all religions. You don't have to worry, especially in the Korean version. For example, in the Korean version, it is written as "church or temple" or "God or Buddha" in the sentence. The items to measure preoccupation with devotional songs can also cover all religions.
Point 5. Were control variables introduced? Why not? (there might be some differences between in the practice of devotional songs with respect to difference religions)
Response 5: We checked in advance whether there were exogenous confounding variables among demographic or religious variables that could affect the mediating model. And, among those variables, only period of having a current religion was met the condition of the confounding variable, so the model was adjusted with that variable, period of having a current religion as a covariate. We described what we did as follows. (Line 182-184)
Because the period of having a current religion met the condition of the confounding variable, these models were adjusted for as a covariate.
Point 6. Looking into the background demographics of the sample, why were t-test on genders, or ANOVA accomplished for group comparisons.
Response 6: There was no significant difference in the variables of this study according to gender or age group. We would appreciate it if you understand that the purpose of this study was not to examine the differences in variables according to demographic variables, so it was not included.
Point 7. Do you need to performed CFA on the spiritual well-being and religiosity? Cronbach alpha might not be enough.
Response 7: Thank you for your comment. As you advised, we included the results of CFAs as below.
In this study, a confirmatory factor analysis showed unsatisfactory model fit (TLI = 0.849, CFI = 0.873, SRMR = 0.126, and RMSEA = 0.102 [CI: 0.053 to 0.064]), even though it was modified with some error covariances. Although the factorial structure of this scale for Korean religious individuals was unstable, the internal consistency (Cronbach’s α) of religious, existential, and total spiritual well-being were 0.90, 0.91, and 0.93, respectively. (Line 127-130)
In this study, a confirmatory factor analysis showed acceptable model fit after allowing for three error covariances (TLI = 0.907, CFI = 0.927, SRMR = 0.071, and RMSEA = 0.088 [CI: 0.053 to 0.064]), and the internal consistencies (Cronbach’s α) of I, Ep, and Es were 0.89, 0.83, and 0.85, respectively. (Line 142-144)
However, model fit of the SWBS was not satisfactory. It has long been suggested that Ellison's proposed factorial structure is not stable. There is a problem with the theoretical construction validity of this concept, but it has been used for a long time. While developing some scales or validating some scales from other countries, I have also experienced difficulties regarding unsatisfactory results of confirmatory factor analysis.
We would appreciate it if you consider that cannot be studied with the factorial structure of all scales completely satisfied, while conducting correlational researches. We included as a limitation of the study as follows.
As pointed out in previous studies (e.g. Suh and Chon 2004), the factorial structure of the SWBS for Korean religious individuals was unstable. (Line 337-339)
Point 8. “This finding suggests that even religious individuals who do not use the emotionally adaptive functions of music can experience spiritual well-being by acquiring intrinsic religiosity when they are preoccupied with devotional songs” – provide additional practical implications
Response 8: Thank you for your advice. As you advised, we included an additional practical implication as below.
In other words, even religious people who do not use music emotionally in daily lives can improve their spiritual well-being by making them listen to or sing devotional songs frequently.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
