Measuring the Social Perception of Religious Freedom: A Sociological Perspective

Abstract

This article discusses the construction of the measuring instrument for the study of social perception of religious freedom (SPRF). We provide an overview of existing definitions of religious freedom from a social-science perspective, which ground the empirical research of religious freedom and describe the conceptualization of SPRF. We focus on the operationalization model and introduce the operational variables for the SPRF research, also emphasizing the political, religious, and human rights contexts of independent variables. Finally, the results of exploratory factor analysis that allow to construct the balanced model of SPRF based on statistically weighted factors and scales are presented. The theoretical and statistically tested instrument is discussed as a result of this analysis.

Attitudes toward Civil Human Rights among Italian Students of Sociology: The Effects of Religion and Theology

“…Similar empirical evidence was revealed in the study by Breskaya and Giordan (forthcoming). These authors argued that the absence of association between the concept of pluralism as a theological truth-claim and perception of religious freedom can be considered in the context of the privatization of religious lifestyles in Italy (Berzano 2019), while religious freedom is seen primarily as a societal value (Breskaya and Giordan 2019). Similar to the current study, the positions that are more antithetical to pluralism, such as exclusivism and atheism, are significant predictors of attitudes toward religious freedom.…”

Perceptions of the Functions of Religion and Attitude toward Religious Freedom: Introducing the New Indices of the Functions of Religion (NIFoR)

“…The data for this study come from the 2018 survey on Social Perception of Religious Freedom (SPRF). The aim of the SPRF survey was to verify the new instrument on the multidimensional concept of religious freedom in the Italian context and consider the basic correlates of SPRF (Breskaya and Giordan 2019). The questionnaires were completed in May-October 2018 in Padova (Northern Italy) by 1035 students.…”

“…The second hypothesis is that those functions of religion, which assist an individual in achieving spiritual well-being and their search for sacred, has predictive power vis-à-vis positive perception of religious freedom (H2). We build up these two hypotheses based on previous research (Breskaya and Giordan 2019), which demonstrated that the meaning of religious freedom in a society is constructed on the intersection of subjective and societal values. This previous research also provided empirical evidence that spiritual and political identities of participants have particular statistical significant effects on societal and subjective dimensions of religious freedom.…”

The New Sociology of Religion

“…Meanwhile, other original topics, to which little attention had been paid in the past, are now being proposed in the scholarly arena, such as the issue of abandonment of one's religion [82] and the opposite phenomenon of conversions [83], gender diversity [84,85], migration [86], mass media [87,88], developments in new Asian religious movements [89] and the contrast between the secular and religious in urban structures in Asia [90], the problems of violence [91] and the relationship between conspiracy theories and religion [92], connections between ecology and religions [93], those concerning peace and conflict [94], the connections between cities and religion [95,96] and sport and religion [97], monasticism [98], religious diversity [99], chaplaincy and religious diversity in prisons [100][101][102], language [103], the economic aspects of religions [104], legislative issues (especially concerning freedom of religion and human rights) [105][106][107][108][109][110], political issues [111][112][113] and globalisation [114]. The methodology only remains somewhat overshadowed, but there is no shortage of relevant contributions [115].…”