A Psychological Measure of Islamic Religiousness: Development and Evidence for Reliability and Validity

Abstract

A 60-item Psychological Measure of Islamic Religiousness (PMIR) was developed in three stages: (a) Domains of Islam relevant to physical and mental health were identified via theory and semistructured interviews with 25 Muslims; (b) an initial version of PMIR was pilot tested with 64 Muslims from the United States and Israel; and (c) desirable psychometric qualities of the final measure were established based on an international, Internet-solicited sample of 340 Muslims, as follows. The PMIR yielded seven distinct, highly reliable factors: Islamic Beliefs; Islamic Ethical Principles & Universality; Islamic Religious Struggle; Islamic Religious Duty, Obligation & Exclusivism; Islamic Positive Religious Coping & Identification; Punishing Allah Reappraisal; and Islamic Religious Conversion. All scales demonstrated desirable variability and strong discriminant, convergent, predictive, and incremental validity using multiple mental and physical criterion variables. The findings indicate that Islam is central to the well-being of Muslims and the PMIR provides a scientifically based, multidimensional understanding of Islam needed to advance the nearly nonexistent psychological theory, practice, and research focused on Muslims.