How to Measure Baha’i Religiosity: The CRSi-20 for Baha’is as a First Reliable and Valid Measurement

Abstract

The concepts and measurements in psychology of religion often adhere to its Judeo-Christian roots, which causes problems when measuring non-Christian religiosity. In this paper, two successive studies are presented. The first study applied Huber’s CRS-15, while the second study used the CRSi-20. Both samples consisted of believers of the non-Christian, Abrahamic Baha’i religion in Germany. In the first study, in which N = 472 participated (MAge = 43.22, SDAge = 15.59, 60.0% female), the reliability and validity issues related to items of public practice and experience of the CRS-15 were uncovered. After modifying the content of these items and adding the five additional items of the interreligious CRSi-20, which was tested among N = 324 participants (MAge = 47.12, SDAge = 17.06, 59.6% female) in a second study, most reliability issues were solved. Confirmatory factor analyses revealed that the CRSi-20 model describes the data appropriately with adequate fit indices. Therefore, the CRSi-20 for Baha’is offers the first reliable and valid measurements of Baha’i religiosity, being at the same time capable of taking the emic perspective fully into account while maintaining the possibility of cross-religious comparisons.