Understanding the Attitudinal Dimensions of Religion and Spirituality

Structural Equivalence of an Attitude Toward Religion Scale in Mexico, Nicaragua and China

“…This is important because in cross-cultural studies the construct measured must be equivalent for the comparison to be meaningful (Van de Vijver & Poortinga, 1997; Van de Vijver & Tanzer, 2004), and specifically about religious assessments, measures have remained culturally specific (Francis & Katz, 2007); therefore, our findings broaden the scope for religious studies. Francis (1978Francis ( , 2009 argued that the attitudinal dimension of religiosity is best measured using scales specific to the doctrine in which it is expressed, and she therefore created different scales toward different religions. Our goal was to develop a scale that evaluated an overall attitude towards religion, and although it was developed considering Mexico and Nicaragua's Catholic background, our construct remained stable even in a totally different religious-cultural context such as China.…”

The Experience of Victimisation among Muslim Adolescents in the UK: The Effect of Psychological and Religious Factors

“…In an early study, Francis (1978) argued that the attitudinal dimension of religion may get closest to the heart of an individual's religiosity, and as a consequence offer the strongest prediction of the correlates, consequences and antecedents of individual differences in religiosity. Following that original publication, a significant literature has emerged employing a family of instruments designed to address this research question across the major faith traditions (see Francis 2009), including the Astley-Francis Scale of Attitude toward Theistic Belief (Astley et al 2012).…”

Monitoring attitude toward Christianity among year 5 and year 6 students attending Church in Wales primary schools

“…This argument recognizes the multi-dimensional nature of religiosity and the comparative strengths and weaknesses of building empirical research on the notions of self-assigned religious affiliation, religious belief, religious practice, religious orientation, or attitude toward religion. Francis argued that the attitudinal dimension (as a measure of the affective component of religion) was able to get closer to the heart of religion within individual lives (see Francis, 2009).…”

“…In this way it became possible to test whether the correlates, antecedents and consequences of individual differences in attitude toward Christianity established in an English-speaking world remained consistent within other linguistic communities. A family of studies has now reported on the satisfactory psychometric properties of a range of translations of the Francis Scale of Attitude toward Christianity (see, for example, Francis, 2009).…”