Authors:	Arzheimer, Kai
Title:	A short scale for measuring political secularism
Online publication date:	4-May-2023
Year of first publication:	2022
Language:	english
Abstract:	As religiousness is declining across democracies, scientific interest in secular orientations and their political implications is growing. One specific and particularly important aspect of secular attitudes is political secularism. Political secularism is not merely the absence of religiousness, but rather a world view which holds that religious beliefs should play no role in politics. While there are hundreds of survey instruments that measure the strength and content of religiousness, there is no comparable measure that taps into political secularism. In this research note, I briefly review the concept of political secularism and present a cluster of items which target it. Utilizing data from four large population representative samples taken from the eastern and western states of Germany, I use confirmatory factor analysis to show that these items form a short but internally consistent scale. This scale also displays convergent and discriminant validity. It may be readily used in future surveys.
DDC:	200 Religion 200 Religion 320 Politik 320 Political science
Institution:	Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz
Department:	FB 02 Sozialwiss., Medien u. Sport
Place:	Mainz
ROR:	https://ror.org/023b0x485
DOI:	http://doi.org/10.25358/openscience-8829
Version:	Published version
Publication type:	Zeitschriftenaufsatz
Document type specification:	Scientific article
License:	CC BY
Information on rights of use:	https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Journal:	Politics and Religion 15 4
Pages or article number:	827 840
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publisher place:	Cambridge
Issue date:	2022
ISSN:	1755-0491
Publisher DOI:	10.1017/S1755048322000104
Appears in collections:	DFG-491381577-H