Abstract
For quite some time there has been widespread consensus in the social sciences that religiosity is a multidimensional and multifaceted phenomenon (see for example Glock 1962; Storm 2009). Individuals may be very religious with respect to one dimension and less so towards another. Previous research has identified various typologies, also called religious profiles, showing different combinations of religious multidimensionality within and across countries. This paper identifies dominant cross-national profiles of religiosity and (1) examines whether there is one valid typology worldwide, or if some countries show profiles more similar to one another than to others; (2) tests the results for invariance to examine whether it is actually appropriate to compare the empirically found typologies of religiosity cross-nationally and (3) looks at the impact of denomination for profile formation. The results reveal that (1) there is a valid typology worldwide, but instead of showing specific characteristics, profiles can be ordered on a single latent continuum from low to high levels of religiosity. (2) It is almost impossible to establish full invariance across countries with a comprehensive set of variables measuring religiosity, but partial homogeneity can be achieved. Contrary to all theoretical expectations, the analyses imply (3) that denomination is not a crucial impact factor for religious profile formation.
Zusammenfassung
In den Sozialwissenschaften herrscht die einheitliche Auffassung, Religion sei ein sowohl mehrdimensionales als auch facettenreiches Phänomen (siehe zum Beispiel Glock 1962; Storm 2009). Demnach können Individuen im Hinblick auf eine Dimension sehr religiös und gleichzeitig in Hinblick auf eine andere Dimension weniger religiös sein. Frühere Studien haben verschiedene Typologien (religiöse Profile) identifiziert, die verschiedene Kombinationen religiöser Mehrdimensionalität innerhalb und über Länder hinweg aufweisen. Der vorliegende Artikel identifiziert dominante, länderübergreifende religiöse Profile und untersucht, ob es eine weltweit gültige Typologie gibt oder ob die religiösen Profile einiger Länder sich stärker ähneln als die anderer Länder. Um herauszufinden, ob ein länderübergreifender Vergleich der empirisch identifizierten Profile zulässig ist, werden die Ergebnisse auf Invarianz überprüft. Anschließend werden die Strukturen der religiösen Profile auf den Einfluss von Religionen bzw. Konfessionen untersucht. Die Ergebnisse belegen die Existenz einer validen, länderübergreifenden Typologie. Allerdings weisen die religiösen Profile keine speziellen Muster auf, sondern lassen sich auf einem einzelnen Kontinuum religiöser Intensität verorten. Es zeigt sich außerdem, dass es fast unmöglich ist, bei einer umfassenden Anzahl von Variablen zur Messung von Religiosität strukturelle Invarianz über Länder hinweg nachzuweisen. Partielle Invarianz hingegen konnte bestätigt werden. Entgegen aller theoretischen Erwartungen implizieren die Analysen, dass Religionen bzw. Konfessionen sich nicht entscheidend auf die Bildung religiöser Profile auswirken.
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Notes
Another question in this context, which is not the focus here, is whether survey instruments are translated accurately so as to be understood equally by respondents within and across countries. This kind of measurement error is in principle always possible, however, not too likely due to the high standard of the ISSP translation procedures.
Continuous measures can be, for example, factor scores resulting from a Confirmatory Factor Analysis.
The procedure to identify profiles of religiosity is explained in detail in the methods section.
Translation from German by the author.
Translation from German by the author.
Due to the data basis this paper differentiates between followers of main religions, in the cases of Jews and Muslims. In the case of Christians, it further differentiates between the denominations: Roman Catholicism, Protestantism and the Orthodox Church. To save space, from now on the term denomination will be used to refer to these Christian denominations as well as the main religions.
The implications of this issue for the comparability of the measurement instruments are further discussed in Sect. 5.
For the full list of countries and sample sizes see Appendix, Table 8. Data from the Netherlands and Russia are excluded due to data inconsistencies. South Africa, Switzerland, Spain and Northern Ireland are excluded, because of filter errors. The four Asian countries Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and Sri Lanka are excluded for comparability reasons (see further explanation in the section Variables). For Belgium only the regional subsample of Flanders is available.
The purpose of this paper is to a large degree methodological; therefore instead of discussing the single dimensions in great detail, this paper takes on existing interpretations and realizes them with similar items. For a thorough discussion of religious dimensions see for example Glock (1962) and Cornwall et al. (1986). For the variable choice of their measurement see Pearce et al. (2013).
For question texts and answer categories see: http://zacat.gesis.org/webview/index.jsp?object=http://zacat.gesis.org/obj/fStudy/ZA4950.
Due to the denominational composition of the countries, the broad categories do not necessarily contain the very same denominations in every country. E. g. the category “Protestants” might cover predominantly mainline Lutheran Protestants in one country and mainline Calvinists in others, whereas in all countries also the rather extreme Protestant Free Churches are also covered by this category. For the national-specific composition of the category “Protestants”, see the national ISSP Variables “nat_Relig” on ZACAT (http://zacat.gesis.org).
South Korea is a border case here. There are more Christians in South Korea than in the other excluded countries. However, of all religious South Koreans in the sample, 42% do not follow a monotheistic religion. 40% of the whole South Korean sample is non-religious. Since a great number of those have been socialized rather in non-Christian than in a Christian context, South Korea does not meet the selection criteria.
Germany is treated as one unit, although it is well known that East and West Germany vary greatly in religious matters. Nevertheless, the country has been united for 25 years now. It shows cultural facets that might have their origins in different regional history, just as other countries do.
Software used: syntax version of Latent Gold 5.0.
Despite very powerful computing technology (4 CPU, each double core; 8 GB RAM) it was not possible to accomplish such a huge LCA with the default Latent Gold settings. Following the advice of the Technical LG Guide (2005, p. 38) the parameters to be calculated were reduced by the standard error and wald statistics and the calculation was accelerated by only using EM algorithm and not Newton-Raphson. Differences in the results e. g. for the BIC L2 value due to this procedure manifest just on the second or third decimal.
For a discussion on model selection criteria see for example Bacher and Vermunt (2010).
The calculations have shown that weighting actually does not impact the results very much.
For later analyses in the national LCAs also the respondents’ denomination is included as an inactive co-variate.
All LCA results are available from the author on request.
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The research for this study was financially supported by GESIS Leibniz-Institute for the Social Sciences
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Full documentation of the question texts is available at http://zacat.gesis.org/webview/index.jsp?object=http://zacat.gesis.org/obj/fStudy/ZA4950.
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Bechert, I. Comparing religiosity cross-nationally. Z Religion Ges Polit 2, 135–157 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s41682-018-0016-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s41682-018-0016-z