Rasch analysis of student attributes: development and validation of scale to measure religious moderation

Abstract

In Indonesia, the narrative of Religious Moderation is being hotly discussed and has even been included in the RPJMN 2020-2024. The target index has been determined, but measurement instruments are still minimal and can be used to measure the level of religious moderation at the university level. This research was conducted in response to these needs. The development of this instrument uses a unidimensional construct using Rasch analysis. The number of samples used was 406 students selected using the multistage random sampling technique. This development goes through three stages, namely item generation,where the objectives and concepts of measuring religious moderation are arranged to produce latent items. The theoretical analysisaims to test the scale's content validity.The last stage is a psychometric analysiswhich seeks to analyze the availability of the sample and construct the validity and reliability of the scale using Rasch analysis. The first stage produced 48 statements; thesecond stage resulted in changes in the religious context and usedmore appropriate words to describe the scale interval. The last stage makes 24 valid argumentsto be sureof religious moderation.

The Instrument Construction for Students' Religious Moderation: Psychometric Analysis

“…The instrument developed in this study was the Thurstone scale to measure students' attitudes of religious moderation. The scale originally developed by Louis Leon Thurstone (Yusuf, 2017) in its development has had a major impact on the development of the social sciences, especially those related to the measurement of non-cognitive aspects such as interests, attitudes and values (Setiawati el al, 2013;Zufriani et al, 2022).…”

“…The purpose of expert judgment according to Fung ( 2014) is to consider the relevance of the contents of documents that consist of several domains and the representativeness of the contents of an item to represent the domain as a whole. For example the suggestions received by Zufriani et al (2022) from experts judgment for the use of scales with agree and disagree options, because the use of choices such as (strongly agree, agree, neutral, disagree, strongly disagree) causes informants inclined to choose neutral options to avoid problems.…”

“…The first step in preventive efforts is to explore and measure the extent of religious moderation. A valid and reliable measurement should be used for indexing (Furr & Bacharach, 2008;Zufriani et al, 2022) and articulating the goal of achieving religious moderation (instrument). Thus, there is need of measurement to assess the high and low attitudes of individual religious moderation.…”

“…Munir and Herianto (2020) developed a questionnaire on understanding moderation in religion students which not using an attitude scale. Zufriani et al (2022) in developing the instrument, getting advice from expert judgment to use a scale with agree and disagree options, because the use of options such as (strongly agree, agree, neutral, disagree, strongly disagree) causes informants to be more inclined to choose a neutral option to avoid problems.…”

The scale of religious conservatism among Muslim students in Indonesia: A Rasch Analysis

“…Then the data obtained were analysed in terms of performance based on the item-respondent attributes and vice versa using the Rasch model approach (Zufriani, Pitriani & Damni 2022). In all, 15 items qualified following the Rasch model approach after excluding unnecessary items that overlapped with the logit values of other items.…”