Are you religious?

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One of my research questions has to do with what sociologists call “religiosity.”  An instrument developed by Gottlieb (2007) assesses the following five measures of religiosity:  religious self-identification (“How religious are you?”), religious beliefs (i.e., in God’s existence and the afterlife), religious practices, religious values, and religious background.  The problem with the questionnaire is that there are only ten items designed to measure the above, resulting in an average of two items per measure.

Interesting:  A factor analysis was performed on the responses of 1,068 school teachers, and three factors loaded.   Prior to the stat, I had actually hoped there would only be two, to be neatly labeled as Personal Religiosity and Family Religiosity.  If you read the items, most of them inquire about the respondent, while the last three are about his/her family background, so the two categories make a lot of sense.

As it turned out, three factors emerged, which I’ve decided to label in this manner:  Personal Religiosity, Religious Beliefs, and Family Religiosity.

What was not expected was the way items for Religious Self-identification, Religious Practices, and Religious Values loaded together.   But it makes sense:  Religious practices, religious values, and self-identification may not be distinct constructs, as initially thought.

It was also not immediately clear why the two items on Religious Beliefs loaded separately from those clustered together under Personal Religiosity.   Perhaps there is a distinction between religious beliefs on the one hand and religious practices and values on the other.  Religious beliefs do not automatically translate to religious practices and values.  In other words, just because one subscribes to particular religious beliefs—even if strongly—does not necessarily mean that one holds the corresponding values or engages in the expected religious practices.

Interestingly, the item on the family’s religious practices registered the highest number of moderate to strong correlations—specifically, with the items on:  (a) Religious self-identification, (b) regular attendance of church services, (c) value of religious customs and practices, (d) value of same religion in marriage, (e) father’s religiosity, and (f) mother’s religiosity.  This pattern hints at two things:   First, parental religiosity (e and f) is obviously related to the the family’s religious practices.  Secondly, the religious practices of one’s family is an important determinant in a person’s overall religiosity.