A Psychometric Evaluation of the Santa Clara Strength of Religious Faith Questionnaire among Students from Poland and Chile

Marcin Wnuk

doi:10.1007/s11089-017-0754-4

Abstract

This study verifies the psychometric properties of the Santa Clara Strength of Religious Faith Questionnaire (SCSORFQ). This measure consists of 10 items regarding strength of religious faith, regardless of religious denomination or affiliation. Participants were 177 students from Chile and 393 students from Poland. The SCSORFQ method is a reliable measure with good internal consistency evaluated by the α-Cronbach coefficient. Factor analysis statistically confirmed the unidimensional structure of the SCSORFQ. The strength of religious faith in both student groups was moderate to strong correlated with public or private aspects of religiousness and strong correlated with spiritual experiences. It was weakly correlated with the cognitive indicator of well-being as satisfaction with life as well as with existential variables like hope and meaning of life. The results confirm that the SCSORFQ is psychometrically sound and is therefore recommended for use by researchers studying the construct of religiousness.

Highlights

Within recent years, there has been a notable rise of interest in the role that religion and spirituality play in the quality of an individual’s life and well-being, and new tools for their study have been developed (Egbert et al 2001; Francis 1993; Kilpatrick et al 2005; Lewis et al 2005; O’Connell and Skevington 2007; Plante et al 2002; Storch et al 2004b; Worthington et al 2003)
Sample 1 Sample 1 consisted of university students from Chile, n = 177
For non-religion-affiliated Chilean students, the strength of their religious faith was related to frequency of prayer and was not correlated with frequency of attending Mass, life satisfaction, or hope

Summary

Introduction

There has been a notable rise of interest in the role that religion and spirituality play in the quality of an individual’s life and well-being, and new tools for their study have been developed (Egbert et al 2001; Francis 1993; Kilpatrick et al 2005; Lewis et al 2005; O’Connell and Skevington 2007; Plante et al 2002; Storch et al 2004b; Worthington et al 2003). Religious coping is recognized as a multidimensional process that cannot be reduced to simple behavioural indicators (e.g., prayer, going to a place of worship) or restricted to passive or defensive functions of the psyche (denial, rationalization, etc.) It incorporates active, passive, problemfocused, emotion-focused, intrapsychic (i.e., cognitive, behavioural), and interpersonal methods of managing stress (Klaassen et al 2006). The above controversies reflect a lack of reliable measures in the literature for studying religiousness that both have a universal character independent of cultural and belief contexts and are simple and easy to use and reflect various religious-spiritual aspects. It seems, that the Santa Clara Strength of Religious Faith Questionnaire (SCSORFQ) fulfils these requirements. Reliability of the SCSORFQ using the test-retest method, with a 3 week delay, gave values of α ranging from 0.93 in patients with breast cancer to 0.83 in healthy adults (Sherman et al 2001)

Objectives

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Results

Conclusion