Development of a German Implicit Measure of Religiosity

Abstract

This study addressed the lack of implicit measures of religiosity in German research by developing a German Single Category Implicit Association Test (SC-IAT) for measuring the associative religious self-concept. The SC-IAT was applied to a sample consisting of 389 German students with different subjects of study and internally consistent ( r = .72). To estimate the psychometric criteria of construct validity, SC-IAT scores were correlated to the Centrality of Religiosity Scale (CRS), whose construct psychological approach can be theoretically linked to the concept of associative representations in the research on IATs. Corresponding to the average relationship between implicit and explicit measures in literature, the correlation was moderately ( r = .33). Group comparisons relating to religious affiliation and subject of study provided initial evidence for criterion validity. There were complications with the attribute category “non-religious,” especially by participants without a religious affiliation, however, the SC-IAT could also provide a method to investigate this issue.