Teaching spiritual techniques in continuing education programmes to train older adults for community service and volunteer work contributes to self-efficacy and prosocial behaviours: A five-year follow-up study in four South Asian cities

This article presents a five-year follow-up waitlist control design study investigating the impact of a spiritual education programme on self-efficacy and prosocial behaviours of South Asian older adults participating in adult and continuing education initiatives of volunteer work and community service. Intervention group older adults (IN2 = 321) reported higher scores on outcome measures as compared to the waitlist control group (CN2 = 303). Post-intervention outcome scores were higher for participants from Mumbai and Kathmandu, women, middle class, Hindus and Buddhists, single, highly educated, in good health, with an innate desire to volunteer, who attended more than 75% of the spiritual education programme lessons and regularly self-practiced. Self-practice was the strongest predictor of post-test outcomes. Structural equation models indicated that spiritual education programme attendance and self-practice mediated the relationship between socio-demographic moderators and outcomes. The spiritual education programme is a useful intervention and can be incorporated in adult and continuing education training programmes with some refinements for specific subgroups.