مقايسۀ تجربي سنجه هاي دينداري: دلالت هاي روش شناسانۀ كاربرد سه سنجه در يك جمعيت

Empirical Comparison of Religiosity Measures: Methodological Implications of the Application of Three Measures in the Same Population

Measuring religiosity has always been a concern of socio-psycho researchers on religion and many researchers have made their attempts in the construction of reasonable scales of religiosity. Although some constructed scales have been applied more frequently, there is no consensus on a proper measure. This paper launches two main questions, that is, if the application of different religiosity measures makes any difference in estimating of religiosity of the respondents, and also in the assessment of the relationship between religiosity and other variables? To address these questions, three religiosity measures developed and used more frequently by Iranian scholars applied in the same population, that is, a sample of 352 dormitory students of Semnan University in 2006-2007. The findings reveals: firsty, all three measures enjoy a high level of reliability and validity. Second, the level of the religiosity of the respondents is almost the same according to all measures and categorized as high. Finally, regarding the relationship between religiosity and other variables, the application of the measures makes any significant difference in the assessment of the relationships. The implications of these findings for further studies are discussed in the paper.