Measuring Five Dimensions of Religiosity across Adolescence

Abstract

This paper theorizes and tests a latent variable model of adolescent religiosity in which five dimensions of religiosity are interrelated: religious beliefs, religious exclusivity, external religiosity, private practice, and religious salience. Research often theorizes overlapping and independent influences of single items or dimensions of religiosity on outcomes such as adolescent sexual behavior, but rarely operationalizes the dimensions in a measurement model accounting for their associations with each other and across time. We use longitudinal structural equation modeling (SEM) with latent variables to analyze data from two waves of the National Study of Youth and Religion. We test our hypothesized measurement model as compared to four alternate measurement models and find that our proposed model maintains superior fit. We then discuss the associations between the five dimensions of religiosity we measure and how these change over time. Our findings suggest how future research might better operationalize multiple dimensions of religiosity in studies of the influence of religion in adolescence.

Processes of Religious and Spiritual Influence in Adolescence: A Systematic Review of 30 Years of Research

“…First, we coded based on the dimension(s) of RS that was the source of influence (see Appendices S5 and S6). Numerous multidimensional models of RS have been proposed in sociology (Cornwall, Albrecht, Cunningham, & Pitcher, 1986;Glock & Stark, 1965;Pearce, Hayward, & Pearlman, 2017) and psychology (Idler et al, 2003;King, Clardy, & Ramos, 2014;Koenig, Parkerson, & Meador, 1997;Saroglou, 2011). However, each seems to be missing one or more dimensions included in the others, so we synthesized them into seven core dimensions of RS, each with multiple sub-dimensions: Cognitive, Behavioral, Affective, Identification; Well-being, Spiritual, Ecological, as well as Transformational RS Experiences and Overall RS (see Appendix S5 for brief descriptions of each; see Appendix S6 for coding frequencies).…”

Religious Resilient School: A Mental Health School Study

“…There were three variables measured in the study, mental health was measured by Indonesian Version MHI-38 that was developed by Viet & Ware [13], resiliency was measured with adapted resilience dimension from Psychological Capital Questionnaire [19], and religiosity measured with 21-item General Religiosity Scale, that developed from the Religiosity questionnaire [25].…”

“…Referring to the Glock and other religiosity construct researchers, Lisa Pearce had conducted validation to religiosity dimensions and found five dimensions that are ubiquitous across frameworks and have multiple valid empirical measures corresponding to these five dimensions (Pearce, Hayward, & Pearlman, 2017). The five unique dimensions of religiosity that are important in the lives of adolescents are religious beliefs, religious exclusivity, external practice, personal practice, and religious salience [25] Religious belief is what people call the "ideological" [26] or "doctrine" component [27] of religiosity. It defined as the acceptance of a standard set of religious beliefs, such as God, the afterlife, the supernatural, etc.…”

“…We hypothesized that in Indonesia, there is relationship between high level of religiosity and better mental health, and higher resilience will lead to higher score mental health. We want to know which one of the five dimension of religiosity that correlate with better mental health [25].…”

“…We developed a 21-item General Religiosity Scale that was adapted from National Study of Youth and Religion which measures religious belief, religious exclusivity, external practice, personal practice, and religious salience [25] α=0.676). Some of the items included were "How often, if ever, do you pray by yourself alone?"…”