Standardizing Measures of Religiosity for Norwegians

Abstract

Although the literature is replete with measures of religiosity developed for other cultures (cf. Batson & Ventis, 1982), heretofore there has existed no scale of proven applicability to Norwegians. This study attempted to meet that need by assessing some of the psychometric properties of a 358-item questionnaire on a Norwegian sample of 471 self-identified Christians. Initially two sources for scale items were identified: unique Norwegian traditions arising out of a dominant Lutheran culture, and scales in the literature standardized in other cultures. Of special interest was the question of whether scales developed in other cultures would evidence similar psychometric properties among Norwegians. In general, the internal consistency of the included scales was satisfactory, and the intercorrelations were in the predicted directions. However, the internal consistency of Batson's Quest scale (Batson & Schoenrade, 1991a) did not hold up when translated into Norwegian.