Analysis of Data in Relation to the Hypotheses

Hypothesis 1

 Hypothesis 1 stated that older adults with a high degree of spirituality receiving hip

or knee arthroplasty for primary osteoarthritis would report less pain and receive less

analgesic medication than those participants with a lower degree of spirituality after

controlling for health self-assessment.

 The Pearson Correlational analysis as shown in Table 3, demonstrated there was no

significant correlation between spirituality response, self-health questionnaire response

and the following variables: age (r = -0.02, p = 0.84), average pain scores day one (r=

0.01, p = 0.92), average pain scores day two (r = 0.02, p = 0.84), average pain scores day

three (r = 0.03, p = 0.78) and analgesic medication use (r = -0.04, p = 0.69). A partial

correlation coefficient controlling for the self-health assessment score was then analyzed

(See Table 4) and there were no significant correlations between spirituality, and the

variables: age (r = -0.05, p = 0.60), pain day one (r = 0.53, p = 0.59), pain day two (r =

0.06, p = 0.53), pain day three (r = 0.06, p = 0.56) and pain medication (r = -0.02, p =

0.81). Hence, Hypothesis 1 was rejected.

Hypothesis 2

 Hypothesis 2 stated that older adults with a high score on the high self-health

assessment tool would report less pain and receive less analgesic medication than those

participants with a low score on the self-health assessment tool after controlling for

spirituality.

 The Pearson Correlation found there was a significant correlation as shown in

Table 5 between the variable for health on the Short Form-36 Health Survey and age (r =

0.23, p = 0.02), average pain scores day one (r = -0.31, p = 0.00), day two (r= -0.29, p =