Religiousness/Spirituality ( Fetzer Institute, 1999 ). We also describe more general measures of religiosity, such as
the Faith Maturity Scale ( Benson et al., 1993 ) and the Religious History Scale ( George, 1999 ) (largely developed
within Christian populations) and specific measures that assess religiosity within non-Christian traditions, such
as the Santosh-Francis Scale of Attitude Towards Hinduism ( Francis et al., 2008 ) and the Buddhist Beliefs and
Practices Scale ( Emavardhana & Tori, 1997 ).
These measures will equip researchers with tools that they can use to investigate the relationships between
religious involvement and a wide variety of health outcomes, including mental health, social health, behavioral
health, and physical health. Such measures need to be reliable, in that they consistently measure the same thing,
and valid, in that they are actually measuring what they claim to measure (and not some other closely related
construct). Multi-item measures are also preferred over those that contain only one or two items in order to cap-
ture a sufficient variability in response and to cover a wide range of religious belief and activity. This will
increase the likelihood of identifying an association between the measure and the health outcome being studied.
We now turn to the scales themselves.
SINGLE DIMENSIONAL SCALES
Attachment to God Scale (AGS)
(Rowatt & Kirkpatrick, 2002 ).
Variable
Attachment to God involves the application of attachment theory to one’s relationship with God. The question
is whether people’s attachment styles (which can be described as secure, anxious, and distant) with God is simi-
lar to their attachment styles with human attachment figures (parents, etc).
Description
This 9-item AGS scale assesses attachment to God, and is composed of a 6-item avoidance and a 3-item anxiety
subscale. The purpose of the avoidance subscale is to determine whether a person’s attachment to God is warm
and close, or distant and avoidant. The anxiety subscale seeks to capture whether that attachment is safe and
secure, or anxious and insecure. The attachment model on which the scale is based assumes that a healthy rela-
tionship with God is one that is close and personal, as well as consistent, predictable and readily available. The
items on this scale determine the nature of the person’s relationship with God based on these qualities.
Responses to each item range on a 7-point Likert-type scale from 1 ‘not characteristic of me’ to 7 ‘characteristic of
me.’ Avoidance and anxiety subscales are summed up separately (score range 6 /C042 for avoidance and 3 /C021 for
anxiety scales). Lower scores indicate stronger attachment.
Sample
The AGS was developed using a community sample of 120 adults (76 women; 44 men) whose mean age was
42 years (95% Christian and 5% no affiliation) and 254 undergraduates (176 women; 76 men) whose mean age
was 19 years (70% Baptists, Catholics, or other Christians) ( Rowatt & Kirkpatrick, 2002 ).
Reliability
Internal Consistency
Cronbach alpha coefficients were reported for the avoidance and anxiety subscales as 0.92 and 0.80, respec-
tively ( Rowatt & Kirkpatrick, 2002 ).
Test/C0Retest
To our knowledge, no studies have reported test /C0retest reliability coefficients to-date.532 19. MEASURES OF RELIGIOSITY
V. VICES AND VIRTUES