RELIGION SCALE

Abstract

The Religion Scale, developed by Panos D. Bardis, is a 25-item psychological scale designed to quantify individuals’ attitudes toward religious beliefs and practices in survey research. Each item is rated on a 5-point Likert scale, where 0 represents strongly disagree and 4 represents strongly agree. The individual item scores are summed to yield a total religiosity score ranging from 0 to 100. Consequently, elevated scores are indicative of a greater adherence to typical religious attitudes and behaviors.

Keywords

Religion, Religiosity, Attitudes, Beliefs, Divinity, Psychological Measurement, Survey Instrument, Bardis, Religious Practices.

Authors

Panos D. Bardis

Purpose

The primary objective of the Religion Scale is to serve as a standardized, easily administrable instrument for measuring attitudes toward religious beliefs and practices within the context of sociological or psychological surveys. The scale aims to provide a reliable quantitative measure of an individual’s level of adherence to conventional religious tenets.

The instrument operationalizes Bardis’s definition of religion, which integrates three core components: (1) cognitive elements concerning ideas about divinity; (2) doctrinal components outlining the relationship between divinity and humanity; and (3) behavioral components related to practices intended to satisfy perceived divine expectations, such as achieving future rewards or avoiding punishment.

Construct

The scale measures the construct of general religiosity. This construct is conceptualized as a broad attitude structure that encompasses both deeply held personal beliefs and overt religious behaviors. The resulting total score is intended to reflect the overall intensity of an individual’s religious commitment.

Items within the scale address various facets of religious life, including personal faith, attendance at religious services, the reading of scriptures, the role of religion in education, and moral precepts. The summation of these item scores provides a quantitative index (0–100) of adherence to conventional religious views, primarily those derived from Western monotheistic traditions (Christianity and Judaism), which formed the basis of the standardization sample.

Validity

The validity of the Religion Scale was primarily established through the known-groups method, demonstrating its ability to differentiate between groups expected to vary significantly in their level of religious commitment, thereby supporting criterion validity.

For example, a sample of 30 self-identified agnostics registered a low mean score (M = 11.93), which was found to be significantly different from the substantially higher mean score (M = 68.73) recorded by a sample of Greek Orthodox Church members. Further studies corroborated these findings: agnostics (M = 10.81) were significantly less religious than Catholics (M = 79.11). Additionally, the scale successfully distinguished between Methodist students studying for the ministry (M = 68.83) and Methodist non-ministerial students (M = 57.97), indicating its sensitivity in measuring differential religious commitment even within similar faith denominations.

Reliability

Reliability estimates for the Religion Scale were calculated across several diverse samples, primarily utilizing the split-half method, often followed by the Spearman-Brown correction to estimate full-scale reliability.

For 30 students attending a midwestern Methodist college, the split-half reliability coefficient was .74, which was raised to .85 after the Spearman-Brown correction. Among 40 agnostics, the initial reliability coefficient was lower at .58, corrected to .73. High reliability coefficients were consistently reported across other samples, including .90 (corrected) for a second Methodist college sample, .98 for a large midwestern university, .84 for Jewish participants from a large city, and .93 (corrected) for Greeks born in Greece. These results suggest robust internal consistency, particularly within traditionally religious populations.

Factor Analysis

The initial development and standardization process for the Religion Scale focused on selecting items based on their discriminatory power rather than employing formal factor analytic techniques to determine underlying latent dimensions. The scale is structured to produce a single, summated score (0–100), implying a primary focus on the measurement of a unitary construct of general religiosity. Therefore, detailed information regarding the factor structure is absent from the original 1961 publication, suggesting that subsequent research may be required to confirm its unidimensionality.

Instrument

Test Type: Attitude Scale / Self-Report Survey

Format: 25 items scored on a 5-point Likert scale (0: strongly disagree; 4: strongly agree).

Language Available: English (Original)

Population Group: General population; validated across Christian (Methodist, Catholic, Greek Orthodox) and Jewish faiths, as well as agnostics.

Age Group: Post elementary-school age and adults.

Population Details: The standardization process began with an initial pool of 200 items, pretested on 500 post elementary-school Jews and Christians from the Midwest. The final 25 items were selected based on their ability to discriminate between high- and low-scoring individuals in a subsequent sample of 100 Midwesterners.

Test Methodology: The scale is designed for ease of administration, requiring minimal instructions beyond clarifying the meaning of the 0 to 4 response continuum. Scoring is straightforward, achieved by simply summing the responses to all 25 items; no items are reverse scored.

Keywords

Split-Half Reliability, Standardization, Known-Groups method, Bardis Scale, Attitudes towards Religion, Church Attendance, Belief Systems, Psychological Measurement.

Authors

Author ORCID Identifier: N/A

Affiliation Email addresses: N/A

Correspondence Address: N/A

Permissions & Fee and Test Year

Test Year: 1961

Permissions and Fees: The original publication date is 1961. Information regarding current copyright status, licensing fees, or necessary permissions for contemporary academic or clinical use is not detailed in the source material. Researchers seeking to utilize the scale should consult the publisher of the journal Social Science for current usage rights.

Reference’s

Bardis, P. (1961). A religion scale. Social Science, 36, 120-123.

Items of the RELIGION SCALE

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

Below is a list of issues concerning religion. Please read all statements very carefully and respond to all of them on the basis of your own true beliefs, without consulting any other per­ sons. Do this by reading each statement and then writing, in the space provided at its left, only one of the following numbers: 0, 1, 2, 3, 4. The meaning of each of these figures is:

• 0 = strongly disagree
• 1 = disagree
• 2 = undecided
• 3 = agree
• 4 = strong agree

(For research purposes, you must consider all statements as they are without modifying any of them in any way.)

1. A sound religious faith is the best thing in life.
2. Every school should encourage its students to attend church.
3. People should defend their religion above all other things.
4. People should attend church once a week if possible.
5. Belief in God makes life more meaningful.
6. Every person should give 10 percent of his income to his church.
7. All people are God’s children.
8. People attending church regularly develop a sound philosophy of life.
9. We should always love our enemies.
10. God rewards those who live religiously.
11. Prayer can solve many problems.
12. Every school should have chapel services for its students.
13. There is life after death.
14. People should read the Scriptures at least once a day.
15. Teachers should stress religious ideals in class.
16. Young people should attend Sunday School regularly.
17. People should pray at least once a day.
18. A religious wedding ceremony is better than a civil one.
19. Religious people should try to spread the teachings of the Scriptures.
20. People should say grace at all meals.
21. When a person is planning to be married, he should consult his minister, priest, or rabbi.
22. Delinquency is less common among young people attending church regularly.
23. What is moral today will always be moral.
24. Children should be brought up religiously.
25. Every person should participate in at least one church activity.