NEARNESS TO GOD SCALE

Abstract

The Nearness to God Scale is a concise, six-item instrument developed by R. L. Gorsuch and C. S. Smith (1983). This measure was adapted and refined from the original 31-item Religious Attitude Inventory created by William E. Broen (1957a,b). Gorsuch and Smith selected items that maintained the greatest construct validity in light of cultural and theological shifts observed in American society since the 1950s. The scale is designed to quantify the subjective feeling of divine closeness, assessing the extent to which an individual perceives God as real, constantly present, and accessible within the context of the Christian faith.

Keywords

Religious psychology, divine closeness, spiritual measurement, religious attitude, God relationship, Christian faith, spiritual experience, Gorsuch and Smith.

Authors

R. L. Gorsuch, C. S. Smith, William E. Broen (original developer of the source inventory).

Purpose

The primary purpose of the Nearness to God Scale is to quantitatively assess a specific dimension of personal religiosity: the subjective perception of communion with the divine. It measures the extent to which an individual feels that God is an active, tangible, and highly accessible presence in their life.

The instrument is particularly useful for identifying individuals who report a highly intimate relationship with God, characterized by regular communication and the feeling of “walking” and “talking” with the divine. While the scale is structurally simple, its conceptualization and interpretation are rooted within the framework of the Christian faith.

Construct

The scale measures the psychological construct of Perceived Nearness to God, sometimes referred to as Divine Closeness or Subjective Divine Presence. This construct is defined by the individual’s internalized sense of God’s reality, proximity, and constant availability.

The six retained items correspond to Factor I of Broen’s original instrument, which represented the experiential, rather than the doctrinal, aspect of religious attitude. A high score suggests a strong personal conviction that the respondent maintains a close, immediate relationship with the divine, which often influences how they attribute responsibility for life events.

Validity

Specific, comprehensive validity data for the six-item Nearness to God Scale is limited, relying heavily on the established psychometric properties of Broen’s original Religious Attitude Inventory.

In terms of Construct Validity, Gorsuch and Smith (1983) noted a significant finding: individuals with higher “nearness to God” scores were substantially more likely to attribute responsibility for the outcomes of major life events and experiences directly to God. Further evidence supporting the construct was derived from an unpublished study involving college students, which correlated Nearness to God scores with the Dimensions of the Philosophies of Human Nature Scale. For both male and female students at Central Michigan University, higher Nearness to God scores were significantly correlated with more negative perceptions of human nature, including low trustworthiness (r = 0.33), low altruism (r = 0.24), and low perceived independence (r = 0.31). These findings suggest that the perceived closeness to the divine is psychologically linked to a view of humanity as dependent or flawed.

Reliability

Formal reliability coefficients for the six-item Nearness to God Scale as revised by Gorsuch and Smith are currently unavailable in published academic sources.

However, an estimate of internal consistency can be extrapolated from the source material. In an unpublished study, Gorsuch administered the 30 items from Broen’s original Religious Attitude Inventory pertaining to the nearness to God dimension to 50 students at Texas Christian University. The resulting interitem consistency coefficient was 0.60, calculated using the K-Richardson formula. While this figure applies to the longer, original dimension, it provides a suggestive benchmark for the reliability that might be expected from the refined Gorsuch and Smith scale.

Factor Analysis

The Nearness to God Scale is rooted in the factor analytic work conducted by William E. Broen (1957a), who analyzed various religious attitudes. Broen’s initial inventory was multidimensional, and the items ultimately selected for the Gorsuch and Smith scale correspond specifically to Factor I of Broen’s original structure.

Gorsuch and Smith (1983) deliberately retained only six items (1, 9, 13, 17, 21, and 23 from Broen’s 1957b instrument) that best captured the dimension of subjective divine presence, ensuring that the revised scale focused exclusively on the perceived closeness to God and maintained strong construct validity relevant to the contemporary American religious landscape.

Instrument

Test Type: Self-report attitude inventory

Format: Binary response (Agree/Disagree)

Language Available: English (Original)

Population Group: College students and adults, useful for both religious and nonreligious groups, but generally assumes a Christian orientation.

Age Group: Late adolescence and adulthood.

Population Details: The standardization sample used by Gorsuch and Smith (1983) included 164 undergraduate students taking social science, nursing, and religion courses at a small Christian college. The sample mean for the Nearness to God score was 5.24 (Standard Deviation = 0.88).

Test Methodology: The instrument is easily administered. Respondents must circle either ‘A’ (Agree) or ‘D’ (Disagree) for each statement. Scoring is straightforward, calculated by summing the number of items with which the respondent agrees. Specific instructions are provided for non-believers, advising them to select ‘D’ if they disagree with the concept of God’s existence.

Keywords

Psychometric scale, religious experience, spiritual measurement, divine relationship, Gorsuch, Broen, religious inventory, attitude scale, scale norms.

Authors

Author ORCID Identifier: Not provided in source material.

Affiliation Email addresses: Not provided in source material.

Correspondence Address: Not provided in source material.

Permissions & Fee and Test Year

The revised six-item Nearness to God Scale was published in 1983. Information regarding specific permissions or fees required for use is not available in the primary source documentation. The original, longer inventory from which the scale was derived, the Religious Attitude Inventory (Broen, 1957b), is documented through the American Documentation Institute: Auxiliary Publications Project, Photoduplication Service, Library of Congress.

The primary location for the published scale and methodology is Gorsuch, R. L., & Smith, C. S. (1983). Attributions of responsibility to God: An interaction of religious beliefs and outcomes. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 22, 340-352.

Reference’s

• Broen, W. E. (1957a). A factor analytic study of religious attitudes. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 54, 176-179.
• Broen, W. E. (1957b). Religious Attitude Inventory: The original correlation matrix, the unrotated factor matrix, and the Religious Attitude Inventory with keys for scoring (Document No. 5066). American Documentation Institute: Auxiliary Publications Project, Photoduplication Service. Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress.
• Gorsuch, R. L., & Smith, C. S. (1983). Attributions of responsibility to God: An interaction of religious beliefs and outcomes. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 22, 340-352.
• Lupfer, M. B., Brock, K. F., & DePaola, S. J. (1992). The use of secular and religious attributions to explain everyday behavior. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 31, 486-503.

Items of the NEARNESS TO GOD SCALE

Directions: Circle A if you agree with the statement. Circle D if you disagree with the statement. Do not spend too much time on any one statement. We realize the difficulty a person who does not believe that God exists might have in answering a statement. If you do not believe in the existence of a God, show your disagreement with the concept by circling the D when you come to such a statement.

• A D I. God is constantly with us.
• A D 2. God can be approached directly by all believers.
• A D 3. God exists in all of us.
• A D 4. I am sometimes very conscious of the presence of God.
• A D 5. God is very real to me.
• A D 6. Because of His presence we can know that God exists.