Table of Contents

Variable:

Sethi and Seligman (1993) de signed the Religiousness Measure in an at tempt to correlate religiosity with attributional style and optimism. Three aspects of religiousness were included on the measure: religious influence in daily life, religious involvement, and religious hope.

Description:

The Religiousness Measure consists of 17 questions. Religious hope is assessed through six questions (e.g., Do you believe that there is a heaven?, Do you believe your suffering will be rewarded?), each placed on a Likert scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly agree). Religious involvement is measured using three questions (e.g., How often do you pray?) evaluated on a frequency scale. Six questions are designed to assess religious influence (e.g., How much influence do your religious beliefs have on the important decisions of your life?); these questions are also evaluated through a 7-point Likert format. In addition, the respondent is asked whether he or she believes in God and whether he or she would marry some one of another religion (to be answered yes or no).

Practical Considerations:

Directions for administering the religious measure are clear. Scoring for the religious hope and religious influence items are determined by means for each subscale. Responses on the religious involvement questions are scored on a scale of l to 6, with the higher number indicating greater involvement. As in the other questions, a mean involvement score is then determined for each subject. The two yes/no questions are not used in quantifying religiousness.

Norms/Standardization:

Members of various religious groups in the United States served as subjects (N = 623). Three broad categories of religious affiliation were created into which these subjects were placed: fundamentalists (N = 208), moderates (N = 274), and liberals (N = 141). Orthodox Jews, Muslims, and Calvinists were placed into the fundamentalist category because these groups tend to interpret religious texts literally and because they place greater regulations upon the daily behavior of their fol lowers. The moderate group was composed of four religions (Conservative Judaism, Catholicism, Lutheranism, and Methodism) based upon textual interpretation and less time (than fundamentalists) spent in religious activities. The liberal category consisted of Reformed Jews and Unitarians be cause these religions encourage a skeptical and individualistic outlook. All subjects ranged in age from 18 to 65 years and were selected from urban areas (New York, Philadelphia, Minneapolis, and Washington, D. C.). No statistically significant effects of gender, age, education, or income were found among the subjects of the three broad religious classifications.

Reliability:

No formal attempt was made to establish the reliability of the measure.

Validity:

Significant differences were found between the fundamentalist, moderate, and liberal classifications in religious influence in daily life, religious hope, and religious involvement. The authors interpreted these differences as confirming their original divisions of the groups into the three broad categories. No significant differences were found within the three classifications on these religious dimensions. The authors re port that each of the three religious measures correlated positively with optimism as measured by the Attributional Style Questionnaire (Schulman, Castellon, & Seligman, 1989). The correlations were rather low (religious involvement, r = .08; religious influences r = 14; religious hope r = .21); how ever due to the large sample size, the correlations were statistically significant. No other attempt to validate the measure with established religious scales was reported.