Black-White Differences in Religiosity: Item Analyses and a Formal Structural Test

Data collected as part of the Middletown project in Muncie, Indiana, are used to test both structural and magnitude differences between black and white dimensions of religiosity. The analysis of Linear Structural Relationships (LISREL) handles a number of potential problems more adequately than the...

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Bibliographic Details
Authors: Jacobson, Cardell K. (Author) ; Heaton, Tim B. (Author) ; Dennis, Rutledge M. (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
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Published: 1990
In: Sociological analysis
Year: 1990, Volume: 51, Issue: 3, Pages: 257-270
Online Access: Volltext (JSTOR)
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Parallel Edition:Non-electronic
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Summary:Data collected as part of the Middletown project in Muncie, Indiana, are used to test both structural and magnitude differences between black and white dimensions of religiosity. The analysis of Linear Structural Relationships (LISREL) handles a number of potential problems more adequately than the traditional factor analytic approach. Four dimensions are examined: personal religious behavior, belief orthodoxy, ritual involvement, and consequentiality. Though the latent dimensions appear for both blacks and whites, the dimensions are not orthogonal. Furthermore, the dimensions are not interrelated the same way for whites as they are for blacks, and specific items do not relate to the latent dimensions the same way for the two groups. Though a great deal of similarity exists for black and white religiosity, the results suggest, paraphrasing Stark (1972), that “differences of kind in piety” exist between blacks and whites. These differences have important implications for the future study of religion.
ISSN:2325-7873
Contains:Enthalten in: Sociological analysis
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.2307/3711177