TY - JOUR
T1 - Theorizing and Measuring Religiosity Across Cultures
AU - Cohen, Adam
AU - Mazza, Gina L.
AU - Johnson, Kathryn
AU - Enders, Craig K.
AU - Warner, Carolyn
AU - Pasek, Michael H.
AU - Cook, Jonathan E.
N1 - Funding Information:
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: The authors thank the University of Notre Dame Science of Generosity Program and the Institute for Social Science Research at Arizona State University (ASU) for their financial support of this research and the ASU Center for the Study of Religion and Conflict for logistical support.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2017, © 2017 by the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, Inc.
Copyright:
Copyright 2017 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.
PY - 2017/12/1
Y1 - 2017/12/1
N2 - For almost 50 years, psychologists have been theorizing about and measuring religiosity essentially the way Gordon Allport did, when he distinguished between intrinsic and extrinsic religiosity. However, there is a historical debate regarding what this scale actually measures, which items should be included, and how many factors or subscales exist. To provide more definitive answers, we estimated a series of confirmatory factor analysis models comparing four competing theories for how to score Gorsuch and McPherson’s commonly used measure of intrinsic and extrinsic religiosity. We then formally investigated measurement invariance across U.S. Protestants, Irish Catholics, and Turkish Muslims and across U.S. Protestants, Catholics, and Muslims. We provide evidence that a five-item version of intrinsic religiosity is invariant across the U.S. samples and predicts less warmth toward atheists and gay men/lesbians, validating the scale. Our results suggest that a variation of Gorsuch and McPherson’s measure may be appropriate for some but not all uses in cross-cultural research.
AB - For almost 50 years, psychologists have been theorizing about and measuring religiosity essentially the way Gordon Allport did, when he distinguished between intrinsic and extrinsic religiosity. However, there is a historical debate regarding what this scale actually measures, which items should be included, and how many factors or subscales exist. To provide more definitive answers, we estimated a series of confirmatory factor analysis models comparing four competing theories for how to score Gorsuch and McPherson’s commonly used measure of intrinsic and extrinsic religiosity. We then formally investigated measurement invariance across U.S. Protestants, Irish Catholics, and Turkish Muslims and across U.S. Protestants, Catholics, and Muslims. We provide evidence that a five-item version of intrinsic religiosity is invariant across the U.S. samples and predicts less warmth toward atheists and gay men/lesbians, validating the scale. Our results suggest that a variation of Gorsuch and McPherson’s measure may be appropriate for some but not all uses in cross-cultural research.
KW - Catholic
KW - Christian
KW - Muslim
KW - confirmatory factor analysis
KW - extrinsic religiosity
KW - intrinsic religiosity
KW - measurement invariance
KW - religious orientation
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U2 - 10.1177/0146167217727732
DO - 10.1177/0146167217727732
M3 - Article
C2 - 28914142
AN - SCOPUS:85032691116
SN - 0146-1672
VL - 43
SP - 1724
EP - 1736
JO - Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin
JF - Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin
IS - 12
ER -