Certainty in Religious Belief Scale

Abstract

The Certainty in Religious Belief Scale was originally developed by R. Thouless in 1935 to quantify the degree of conviction or surety with which an individual holds religious beliefs. While religiousness is multifaceted, this scale focuses exclusively on the dimension of certainty, independent of the actual content or direction (belief vs. disbelief) of the statement.

The original instrument contained 40 items, 25 of which were religious statements, with the remaining 15 covering nonreligious factual, political, or philosophical viewpoints. Due to the dated nature of the nonreligious items, it is standard practice to administer only the 25 religious items. Respondents use a 7-point Likert-type scale, ranging from +3 (complete certainty that the statement is true) to -3 (complete certainty that the statement is false), with 0 indicating total uncertainty. Scores are calculated by summing the absolute value of responses and dividing by the number of items, resulting in a theoretical range of 0 to 3, where higher scores indicate greater certainty.

Keywords

Religious Certainty, Belief Measurement, R. Thouless, Religious Belief, Attitude Surety, Psychology of Religion, Conviction Scale, Certitude.

Authors

R. Thouless

Purpose

The primary purpose of the Certainty in Religious Belief Scale is to measure an individual’s inherent tendency toward certainty regarding their religious viewpoints. Thouless intended to isolate the dimension of conviction, recognizing that beliefs and attitudes can be held with varying degrees of surety, ranging from tentative acceptance to absolute passion.

Crucially, the scale does not seek to evaluate the specific content of the belief (e.g., orthodoxy or liberalism) nor the direction of the belief (whether the respondent agrees or disagrees), but rather the strength of the psychological holding surrounding that belief. The methodology ensures that both high conviction in a positive belief and high conviction in a negative belief (disbelief) contribute equally to the total certainty score.

Construct

The scale measures the psychological construct of Certitude of Belief, specifically in the religious domain. This construct is defined as the intensity or firmness with which an individual affirms or denies a specific proposition.

Thouless initially included nonreligious items to determine if individuals held religious beliefs with a fundamentally different degree of certainty compared to nonreligious, factual statements. His findings suggested that religious beliefs generally commanded greater certainty among his sample. The construct therefore aims to capture this fundamental, dispositional tendency toward conviction, which is considered a critical, though solitary, aspect of overall religiousness.

Validity

The original 1935 study did not report a direct measure of the scale’s validity. However, Thouless did examine several correlational findings that offered mixed, inconclusive support for the scale’s utility.

Contrary to the author’s initial expectations, analysis of a portion of the sample with available intelligence tests scores revealed that those who scored higher on intelligence did not show a decrease in the tendency toward certainty; in fact, a slight increase was observed. Furthermore, Thouless devised an internal measure of orthodoxy and found that the degree of certitude held by those classified as unorthodox was just as strong as the certitude exhibited by the orthodox group. No significant gender differences were observed in the tendency toward certainty. These ancillary findings provide context but should not be interpreted as definitive tests of the scale’s structural or predictive validity.

Reliability

No specific measure of the scale’s internal consistency or test-retest reliability (such as Cronbach’s Alpha or correlation coefficients) was reported in the original 1935 publication by Thouless.

Factor Analysis

The original documentation does not report any formal factor analysis performed on the scale items to determine underlying dimensions or subscales of certainty.

Instrument

Test Type: Self-report psychological scale.

Format: 25 religious items (recommended subset of the original 40) rated on a 7-point Likert-type scale (ranging from +3 to -3).

Language Available: English.

Population Group: General adult population.

Age Group: 20 years and upwards.

Population Details: The original standardization sample consisted of 138 students at the University of Glasgow, Scotland, collected during the early 1930s. This was described as a heterogeneous group covering various occupations and ages from twenty upwards. The mean degree of certainty for the religious items was 2.13, with a standard deviation of 0.32.

Test Methodology: The scale is self-administered and brief. Scoring involves calculating the average degree of certainty by summing the absolute values of the scores (disregarding the positive or negative sign, as both certainty of belief and certainty of disbelief are counted) and dividing by the number of items. The resulting range is 0 to 3.

Keywords

Certitude, Religious Attitudes, Conviction, Psychology of Belief, Glasgow Study, Psychometrics, R. Thouless, Intelligence tests.

Authors

Author ORCID Identifier: Not provided.

Affiliation Email addresses: Not provided.

Correspondence Address: Not provided.

Permissions & Fee and Test Year

Test Year: 1935

Permissions/Fee: The original publication is copyrighted by The British Psychological Society (1935). Researchers should consult the BPS or relevant academic publishing bodies for permission regarding contemporary use.

Reference’s

• Thouless, R. (1935). The tendency to certainty in religious belief. British Journal of Psychology, 26, 16-31.
• Brown, L. B. (1962). A study of religious belief. British Journal of Psychology, 53(3), 259-272.

Items of the CERTAINTY IN RELIGIOUS BELIEF SCALE

IMPORTANT: The following scale items must be preserved in their original language and must not be changed in any way.

Please rate each item below using the following rating scale:

1. +3 – I am completely certain that this statement is true.
2. +2 – I am almost certain that this statement is true.
3. +1 – I think that this statement is true, but I am not at all certain.
4. 0 – I am completely uncertain about this statement.
5. -1 – I think this statement is false, but I am not at all certain.
6. -2 – I am almost certain that this statement is false.
7. -3 – I am completely certain that this statement is false.

1. I. There is a personal God.
2. Jesus Christ was God the Son.
3. There are spiritual realities of some kind.
4. The world was created by God.
5. There is a personal Devil.
6. Matter is the sole reality.
7. There is a God who is all-powerful.
8. There is a God who is altogether good.
9. There are such spiritual beings as angels.
10. Jonah was swallowed by a great fish and afterwards emerged alive.
11. Man has been evolved from lower forms of life.
12. There is an impersonal God.
13. Evil is a reality.
14. The spirits of human beings continue to exist after the death of their bodies.
15. Religion is the opium of the people.
16. There is no God (personal or impersonal).
17. Attendance at church is a better way of spending Sunday than taking a walk in the country.
18. Moses was the author of the first five books of the Bible.
19. Christianity is a better religion than Buddhism.
20. The Bible is literally true in all its parts.
21. Man is, in some degree, responsible for his actions.
22. There is a Hell in which the wicked will be everlastingly punished.
23. The spirits of persons who have died can sometimes communicate with the living.
24. Right will triumph.
25. Belief in evolution is compatible with belief in a Creator.