Download full text
(190.0Kb)
Citation Suggestion
Please use the following Persistent Identifier (PID) to cite this document:
https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:0168-ssoar-91008-4
Exports for your reference manager
A Short Scale for Measuring Political Secularism
[journal article]
Abstract As religiousness is declining across democracies, scientific interest in secular orientations and their political implications is growing. One specific and particularly important aspect of secular attitudes is political secularism. Political secularism is not merely the absence of religiousness, but... view more
As religiousness is declining across democracies, scientific interest in secular orientations and their political implications is growing. One specific and particularly important aspect of secular attitudes is political secularism. Political secularism is not merely the absence of religiousness, but rather a world view which holds that religious beliefs should play no role in politics. While there are hundreds of survey instruments that measure the strength and content of religiousness, there is no comparable measure that taps into political secularism. In this research note, I briefly review the concept of political secularism and present a cluster of items which target it. Utilizing data from four large population representative samples taken from the eastern and western states of Germany, I use confirmatory factor analysis to show that these items form a short but internally consistent scale. This scale also displays convergent and discriminant validity. It may be readily used in future surveys.... view less
Keywords
ALLBUS; secularization; measurement; religiousness; democracy; political factors; Weltanschauung; Federal Republic of Germany
Classification
Basic Research, General Concepts and History of Political Science
Sociology of Religion
Free Keywords
German General Social Survey - ALLBUS 2012 (ZA4616 v1.0.0)
Document language
English
Publication Year
2022
Page/Pages
p. 827-840
Journal
Politics and Religion, 15 (2022) 4
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1017/S1755048322000104
ISSN
1755-0491
Status
Published Version; peer reviewed