Catholic Religious Practices Questionnaire (CRPQ): Construction and Analysis of Psychometric Properties

Abstract

Members of the Catholic Church express their faith in a variety of manners, in general with a focus on liturgical and popular forms of piety. This article provided construction and initial validation for a brief questionnaire to measure Catholic religious practices. The authors used Sample 1 (n = 219) for exploratory factor analysis and Sample 2 (n = 181) for confirmatory factor analysis and to test the validity of a new scale. A model with two factors with five items each provided a good fit. The Catholic Religious Practices Questionnaire (CRPQ) consists of two subscales: official religiosity and folk practices. Both exhibit positive though varying correlations with the Centrality of Religiosity Scale (CRS) and Multidimensional Prayer Inventory (MPI). The new questionnaire has been confirmed as a reliable and valid measure that takes into account the distinctive features of the Catholic religious tradition.

Keywords

• religious practices
• Catholic Church
• psychological assessment
• psychology of religion