Spiritual Intelligence Linked to Happiness in Nursing Students, Study Finds

Nursing students spend their training years confronting some of the most emotionally demanding situations in professional life, from end-of-life care to the daily pressures of clinical rotations. A new cross-sectional study from Türkiye adds a fresh dimension to the conversation about how these students cope, reporting that spiritual intelligence — the capacity to draw on inner meaning, awareness, and a sense of purpose — is positively associated with happiness. The research, published in BMC Medical Education by Asena Köse and Bahar Çiftçi of Atatürk University’s Faculty of Nursing, also found that academic achievement stood apart from both of these psychological measures, suggesting that grades and well-being travel on separate tracks.

The study surveyed 278 nursing students at a single Turkish university between September and November 2024. Participants completed their questionnaires online, filling out a descriptive information form covering demographic and educational characteristics, the Spiritual Intelligence Scale, and the Oxford Happiness Questionnaire Short Form. Before any data were gathered, the protocol received ethical approval from the Atatürk University Faculty of Nursing Ethics Committee, and every participant provided written informed consent electronically. The design was cross-sectional, meaning the researchers captured a snapshot of the students at one point in time rather than following them over months or years.

Spiritual intelligence, as operationalized in the study, refers to a set of capacities that go beyond conventional cognitive measures. It encompasses an individual’s ability to find meaning in experience, to maintain awareness of a deeper sense of self, and to draw on inner resources when facing adversity. In nursing education, where students must reconcile the technical demands of clinical practice with the human realities of illness and death, this construct has attracted growing attention. Researchers have proposed that students with higher spiritual intelligence may be better equipped to manage stress, sustain empathy, and preserve their own psychological balance while caring for others.

The numbers tell a measured story. The students’ mean happiness score on the Oxford questionnaire was 19.76, with a standard deviation of 3.52, while the mean spiritual intelligence score was 59.59, with a standard deviation of 6.18. On its own, neither figure is remarkable; the interest lies in how the two variables move together. Using Pearson correlation analysis, the team found a weak but statistically significant positive correlation between spiritual intelligence and happiness, with a correlation coefficient of 0.176 and a p-value of 0.003. In practical terms, students who scored higher on spiritual intelligence tended, on average, to report somewhat greater happiness, although the relationship explains only a small share of the variation between individuals.

To probe whether this association held up under more rigorous scrutiny, the researchers turned to multiple linear regression. This statistical technique allows investigators to estimate the independent contribution of each predictor variable while holding all the others constant — a crucial step when demographic and educational factors, such as age, gender, or year of study, might confound a simple correlation. After adjustment for these characteristics, happiness and spiritual intelligence remained independently associated with each other. The link was not an artifact of who the students were or where they stood in their program; it persisted on its own statistical footing.

Perhaps the most striking finding was the one that failed to materialize. Academic achievement, the third variable in the study’s triad, was not independently associated with either spiritual intelligence or happiness once the regression models accounted for demographic and educational characteristics. In other words, being happier or more spiritually aware did not translate into better grades in this sample, and stronger academic performance did not predict greater well-being. For an educational system that often treats academic success as the central currency of student life, the result is a pointed reminder that well-being operates on a partly separate axis.

The statistical machinery behind these conclusions deserves a closer look, because it illustrates how modern educational research separates signal from noise. Descriptive statistics established the baseline profile of the sample. Analysis of variance, or ANOVA, was used to compare mean scores across subgroups of students. Pearson correlation quantified the raw strength and direction of the relationship between spiritual intelligence and happiness. Finally, the multiple regression models performed the heavy lifting, adjusting for the full set of demographic and educational covariates to isolate the independent association between the two psychological constructs. The persistence of the spiritual intelligence–happiness link after this adjustment gives the finding more weight than a simple bivariate correlation would carry.

Why should a weak correlation matter? In well-being research, effect sizes are often modest, and a coefficient of 0.176 is best interpreted as a genuine but limited association rather than a dominant driver of happiness. Happiness in university students is shaped by a vast array of influences — family support, financial security, social networks, physical health, personality traits, and institutional climate, to name only a few. Against that crowded backdrop, any single factor that shows a statistically reliable independent association is noteworthy, particularly one as potentially modifiable as spiritual awareness. The finding does not suggest that spiritual intelligence is a happiness cure-all; it suggests that it is one thread in a much larger fabric.

For nursing educators, the study opens a practical line of inquiry. If spiritual intelligence is independently linked to happiness in students who will spend their careers in emotionally taxing environments, then curricula that nurture meaning-making, reflective practice, and inner awareness might contribute to student well-being in ways that conventional academic support does not. The authors’ data cannot establish causation — a cross-sectional design cannot determine whether higher spiritual intelligence produces happiness, whether happier students develop greater spiritual awareness, or whether both reflect some third influence. Longitudinal and interventional studies would be needed to untangle that question. Still, the association is specific enough to justify testing whether structured programs in spiritual care and reflective practice measurably improve student well-being.

The study also carries a cautionary note about the limits of grades as a proxy for student flourishing. Because academic achievement was not independently tied to either happiness or spiritual intelligence, educators who focus exclusively on academic metrics may miss the psychological dimensions that shape how students experience their training and, later, their profession. With burnout and attrition persistent concerns in nursing worldwide, understanding which inner resources correlate with well-being — even weakly — is a step toward designing educational environments that produce not only competent clinicians but resilient ones. The research, published open access under a Creative Commons license, received no external funding, and the authors report no competing interests.

Subject of Research: The relationship between spiritual intelligence, happiness, and academic achievement in nursing students

Article Title: How spiritual intelligence relates to well-being in nursing education: a cross-sectional study

Article References: Köse, A., & Çiftçi, B. (2026). How spiritual intelligence relates to well-being in nursing education: a cross-sectional study. BMC Medical Education. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12909-026-10130-z

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1186/s12909-026-10130-z

Keywords: spiritual intelligence, happiness, nursing education, well-being, academic achievement, cross-sectional study, nursing students, psychology of spirituality, positive psychology, medical education, regression analysis, Atatürk University