Abstract
The past decade has seen a surge in the development of religion-related measures for Muslim populations. Availability of such measures is vital for conducting research that explores the associations between religiousness and other social and psychological variables of interest. Many of the existing scales reflect common constructs in the psychology of religion field, including religiosity, religious orientation, religious beliefs and practices, and religious coping. The first aim of this chapter was to review these existing scales to document the common constructs that are measured and to provide a compendium of measures from which scholars can compare between instruments before selecting one for research. More than 35 scales were identified that were either developed specifically for Muslim populations or substantially modified from measures designed for Judeo-Christian populations. The second aim of this chapter was to examine in more depth a comprehensive multidimensional measure that incorporates many of the constructs identified in the review of existing scales. The Psychological Measure of Islamic Religiousness (PMIR; Abu-Raiya, Journal of Muslim Mental Health 2:133–154, 2008) is a 60-item measure with seven subscales that are typically applied independently of one another. A review of the literature found the PMIR to show robust psychometric properties, flexible utility for different studies, and applicability across diverse cultural groups. Researchers should carefully consider whether the PMIR or one of the other available measures would be of most relevance to their research.
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Amer, M.M. (2021). Measures of Muslim Religiousness Constructs and a Multidimensional Scale. In: Ai, A.L., Wink, P., Paloutzian, R.F., Harris, K.A. (eds) Assessing Spirituality in a Diverse World. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-52140-0_13
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