Assessment, Statistics, and Research

 T he Biblical Literalism Scale (BLS) is a 10-item scale found in an article by Andrew Village (2005). The content of the scale includes biblical events rated by participants on a scale as follows: ‘definitely happened’, ‘probably happened’, ‘not certain’, ‘probably a story’ or ‘definitely a story.’ High scores indicated a more literal belief. Findings : The survey sample consisted of 404 Christian participants. Scores ranged from 10 (all of the items were rated as stories) to 50 (all items rated as “definitely happened”). Old Testament items were rated as less literal than New Testament items. The average scores were highest in Evangelical churches and lowest in Anglo-Catholic churches. Correlation of scores with other variables BLS and frequent charismatic experience ( r = .51) (note a) BLS and frequent Bible reading ( r = .47) (note b) BLS and age ( r = -.17) BLS and education ( r = -.14) Women scored only slightly higher on (39.8) literalism than did men (3

Photo by Geoff W. Sutton, 2017 Researchers define religious fundamentalism in different ways. One recent model focuses on the way religious people view their sacred text. I have written about the Intratextual Fundamentalism model in a previous post ( October 2013) . In this post, I provide some data related to the 5-item version of the Intratextual Fundamentalism Scale (IFS), which I have found useful in research projects. The revised version of the scale (IFS) has five items--each measuring a dimension of intratextuality (Williamson, Hood, Ahmad, Sadiq, & Hill, 2010). Here are the five dimensions (from my previous blog): Divine : The sacred text is a revelation from God (or of divine origin) to humans. Regardless of the involvement of people in the writing of the text, God (or a deity) is the author. Inerrant : The sacred text does not contain errors, inconsistencies, or contradictions. The text is objectively true. Privileged : The sacred text of the fundamentalist gr

One way to think about the components of religion is three-dimensional, which includes  beliefs, practices, and experiences.  A few years ago, a group of us studied Christian counseling to discover what Christian counselors actually did that was different from other counselors (Sutton, Arnzen, & Kelly, 2016). We wanted to get more specific about the identity of Christian counselors--beyond a simple checklist of their affiliation with a large group such as Presbyterian or a movement such as Pentecostal. As part of our plan to be more specific about spirituality, we created a few measures.  Previously, I reported on a scale for assessing spiritual practices . This time I present a measure of beliefs, the Christian   Beliefs Index .             The wording of the items clearly applies to the Christian faith, but the point of our measure was to be more precise about the diversity of beliefs within Christian cultures (i.e., groups or denominations). I’ll comment on the item