Measuring Religiousness in Health Research: Review and Critique
Although existing measures of religiousness are sophisticated, no single approach has yet emerged as a standard. We review the measures of religiousness most commonly used in the religion and health literature with particular attention to their limitations, suggesting that vigilance is required to a...
| Authors: | ; ; |
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Interlibrary Loan: | Interlibrary Loan for the Fachinformationsdienste (Specialized Information Services in Germany) |
| Published: |
[2008]
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| In: |
Journal of religion and health
Year: 2008, Volume: 47, Issue: 2, Pages: 134-163 |
| Further subjects: | B
Measurement
B Spirituality B Worldview B Religiousness B Philosophy |
| Online Access: |
Presumably Free Access Volltext (Resolving-System) |
| Summary: | Although existing measures of religiousness are sophisticated, no single approach has yet emerged as a standard. We review the measures of religiousness most commonly used in the religion and health literature with particular attention to their limitations, suggesting that vigilance is required to avoid over-generalization. After placing the development of these scales in historical context, we discuss measures of religious attendance, private religious practice, and intrinsic/extrinsic religious motivation. We also discuss measures of religious coping, wellbeing, belief, affiliation, maturity, history, and experience. We also address the current trend in favor of multi-dimensional and functional measures of religiousness. We conclude with a critique of the standard, "context-free" approach aimed at measuring "religiousness-in-general", suggesting that future work might more fruitfully focus on developing ways to measure religiousness in specific, theologically relevant contexts. |
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| ISSN: | 1573-6571 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Journal of religion and health
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1007/s10943-008-9165-2 |
