What is Spirituality?

How are the survey findings disseminated?

What is the Higher Education Research Institute (HERI)?

What is Spirituality?
Spirituality points to our interiors, our subjective life, as contrasted to the objective domain of material events and objects. Our spirituality is reflected in the values and ideals that we hold most dear, our sense of who we are and where we come from, our beliefs about why we are here—the meaning and purpose we see in our lives—and our connectedness to each other and to the world around us.

Spirituality also captures those aspects of our experience that are not easy to define or talk about, such as inspiration, creativity, the mysterious, the sacred, and the mystical. Within this very broad perspective, we believe spirituality is a universal impulse and reality.

We acknowledge that each student will view his or her spirituality in a unique way. For some, traditional religious beliefs will significantly form the core of their spirituality; for others, such beliefs or traditions may play little or no part. What the research program aims to discern, however, is the level and intensity of spiritual experience among college students.

How are the survey findings disseminated?
The findings will be distributed broadly to scholars, institutions of higher learning, religious organizations, policymakers, the media and others. It is expected that the findings will have implications for curricular and co-curricular transformations in higher education, and will significantly impact a variety of institutions and communities concerned with the spiritual and academic life of today's youth.

What is the Higher Education Research Institute (HERI)?
The Higher Education Research Institute is based in the Graduate School of Education & Information Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles. The Institute serves as an interdisciplinary center for research, evaluation, information, policy studies, and research training in postsecondary education. HERI's research program covers a variety of topics including the outcomes of postsecondary education, leadership development, faculty performance, federal and state policy, and educational equity. Visiting scholars, faculty, and graduate students have made use of HERI facilities and research resources since its affiliation with UCLA in 1973. The Institute's holdings include more than a hundred datasets that are regularly maintained for analysis of postsecondary education.