The NonReligious-NonSpiritual Scale (NRNSS): Measuring Everyone from Atheists to Zionists

Abstract

Although hundreds of measures of personal religiousness and spirituality exist, none are capable of reliably and validly assessing individuals who identify as nonreligious and nonspiritual. There is a need to develop a valid and reliable measure of (non)religiousness and (non)spirituality. This article discusses these problems, and presents the development and initial validation of a 17-item Nonreligious-Nonspiritual Scale (NRNSS) across three studies. The NRNSS exhibited high internal consistency (α > .94) and high test-retest reliability (r = .92). Two exploratory and one confirmatory factor analysis of the NRNSS supported the hypothesized two-factor solution: (a) institutional religiousness and (b) individualistic spirituality. The NRNSS also demonstrated convergent validity through theoretically-expected correlations with established measures of religiousness and spirituality (the Cross-Cultural Dimensions of Religiosity, Humanistic Morality, and Traditional Religious Morality scales). In summary, the NRNSS may work as an initial attempt to address the limitations of other scales for capturing how religious/nonreligious/nonspiritual individuals are.

Secular but not Superficial: An Overlooked Nonreligious/Nonspiritual Identity

“…I have come across only one measurement scale that recognizes the distinction between the figurative and supernatural senses of spirituality. Cragun, Hammer, and Nielsen (2015) designed what they call the "NonReligious-NonSpiritual Scale" (NRNSS). They recognized that the two disparate senses of the word "spiritual" would compromise results with ambiguity, so they decided to specify one sense over the other, and stated it clearly in the instructions to eliminate any confusion: Some people use the terms "spirituality" and "spiritual" .…”

Health Disparities in Nonreligious and Religious Older Adults in the United States: A Descriptive Epidemiology of 16 Common Chronic Conditions

“…In fact, recent studies beginning to actually compare religious and nonreligious respondents support these articles (see, e.g., Cragun et al 2015;Cragun et al 2016). …”

“…When studies demonstrated correlations between religious service attendance (the most common measure used in such studies, see Musick et al 2004 for review) and health outcomes, they missed the context that would suggest what these relationships actually meant (i.e., prevalence estimates) and without comparisons to nonreligious people that could have shown whether or not religion itself actually mattered (Cragun et al 2015). At the same time, religious service attendance could -as many studies have argued (Koenig 2012) and more recent studies contradict (Cragun et al 2016) -facilitate better health outcomes.…”

“…By establishing initial prevalence estimates and using them to contextualize complementary inferential analyses given mathematically adequate sample sizes, we can thus begin to, as suggested by recent studies (Cragun et al 2015;Cragun et al 2016;Hwang et al 2009), illuminate unique contributions to health status from religion and nonreligion versus other social factors with demonstrated influences on health. Such efforts follow the insights of intersectional scholars by critically examining the concrete experiences of people in varied social locations instead of expecting specific relationships a priori or simply repeating dominant cultural discourses (i.e., religion is good, see Barton 2012) that say more about societal power relations than actual health experience (see Grollman 2012;Schultz & Mullins 2006 for examples).…”

Secular but not superficial : an overlooked nonreligious/nonspiritual identity.

“…I have come across only one measurement scale that recognizes the distinction between the figurative and supernatural senses of spirituality. Cragun, Hammer, and Nielsen (2015) designed what they call the "NonReligious-NonSpiritual Scale" (NRNSS). They recognized that the two disparate senses of the word "spiritual" would compromise results with ambiguity, so they decided to specify one sense over the other, and stated it clearly in the instructions to eliminate any confusion:…”