Are Measures of Rigidity Biased Against Religiously Committed Individuals?: A Question that Still Needs to Be Articulated and Answered

Author: Piedmont, Ralph L.

Source: Archive for the Psychology of Religion / Archiv für Religionspychologie, Volume 28, Number 1, 2006 , pp. 115-121(7)

Publisher: BRILL

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Abstract:

This report provides a critique of the target article's premise that measures of rigidity are biased against religiously committed individuals. The report is found to have serious conceptual and methodological problems that undermine its contribution. Conceptually, the paper does not demonstrate that rigidity scales are indeed biased, as that term is used in the field of psychometrics. Methodologically, the paper suffers from multiple weaknesses, including not demonstrating that the "translated" items are comparable (both in terms of content and empirical relatedness) to the original items they are intended to replace, the presence of multi-colinearity among the measures, and inconsistent patterns of convergent correlations for the "new" scale. As such, the target article is unable to provide any credible scientific support for its claims. In response, this paper argues that a more sophisticated understanding of the constructs of rigidity and religious commitment can make sense of this claimed "bias".

Document Type: Research article

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/008467206777832652

Publication date: 2006-07-01