Speaking Religion: Developing an Interview to Assess Fluency Within Seven Worldviews
Sami Ahmad, BA, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA; Joshua Perlin, BA, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL; Keith Meador, MD, ThM, MPH, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN; Harold Koenig, MD, RN, MHSc, Duke University, Durham, NC; and Daniel Hall, MD, MDiv, MHSc, FACS, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA, VA Center for Health Equity Research and Promotion, Pittsburgh, PA
BACKGROUND: Precise measurement in the social science of religion remains challenging. To date, existing measures of religiousness rely on self-report, a subjective approach blind to context-specific dimensions of faith and thus ill-equipped to associate religion with observable behavior patterns. To address this problem, in 2010 we published a study based on the cultural-linguistic theory of religion, which holds that formation within a religious tradition can be understood and measured like fluency in a spoken language. Accordingly, our approach involved an interview questionnaire designed to elicit narrative content that, following assessment by “fluent” faith leaders, could reliably sort respondents into “fluent” vs “non-fluent” categories with contextual relevance. After successful validation in an Episcopalian pilot cohort, in this study we describe the expansion of our approach to include seven religious and secular worldviews: Judaism, Islam, Secular Humanism, and four streams of Christianity delineated by liturgical, creedal, and philosophical commitments.
METHODS: To develop an interview suitable for detecting and sorting respondents into each of the seven worldviews, we first assembled a panel of experts with representatives from each worldview. Panel recruitment was built by convenience using snowballing techniques leveraging the professional networks of the authors. Semi-structured interviews with each panel member sought to define the concept of fluency as well as the boundaries of each worldview. Panelists were then asked to suggest open-ended questions, the answers to which would expose fluency (or the lack thereof) within each tradition. We then conducted two rounds of Delphi consensus methodology in which each suggested question was rated by members of the expert panel to rank them according to anticipated utility in detecting fluency. Mean ratings were reported to panelists in the second round along with each panelist’s first round rating. Second round mean consensus ratings were used by the authors to select a parsimonious sequence of questions assessing fluency within each worldview.
RESULTS: From June to September 2004, a panel of 30 experts were recruited, interviewed and surveyed (6 Jews, 4 Muslims, 5 secular humanists and 15 Christians) to generate 164 candidate questions rated in the first round of Delphi consensus methodology, during which 37 additional candidate questions were suggested. All 201 candidate questions were then rated in the second round of Delphi consensus methodology. Response rates for round 1 and 2 were 59% and 81%, respectively. Using the consensus-derived mean ratings, we created a concise interview questionnaire beginning with a general section for all respondents bearing 7 questions such as: “How does your faith influence your everyday ways of living?” A subsequent self-reported sorting question then directs interviewees to Christian, Jewish, Muslim, or Secular Humanist sections consisting of 15, 10, 12, and 6 questions, respectively. The following are examples from each one of the sections: “Who is Jesus? What is your relationship to him?”; “In what ways is the fulfillment of mitzvot central to your practice of Judaism?”; “In what ways is the concept of ‘Submission’ (to the Creator) central in your life?”; and “What relationship is there between human life and the rest of the universe?”
CONCLUSIONS: Using Delphi Consensus Methodology, we created a parsimonious interview guide of open ended questions designed to elicit fluency within each of seven theological and secular worldviews. Future work aims to validate these questions in a religiously diverse sample using methods similar to those described previously amongst a sample of self-identified Episcopalians. Adjudicated responses might then be used to train natural language processing algorithms to accelerate and automate fluency assessments. This approach, when combined with existing self-report metrics, could advance the empirical study of religion through more precise, context-sensitive assessment of worldview.
METHODS: To develop an interview suitable for detecting and sorting respondents into each of the seven worldviews, we first assembled a panel of experts with representatives from each worldview. Panel recruitment was built by convenience using snowballing techniques leveraging the professional networks of the authors. Semi-structured interviews with each panel member sought to define the concept of fluency as well as the boundaries of each worldview. Panelists were then asked to suggest open-ended questions, the answers to which would expose fluency (or the lack thereof) within each tradition. We then conducted two rounds of Delphi consensus methodology in which each suggested question was rated by members of the expert panel to rank them according to anticipated utility in detecting fluency. Mean ratings were reported to panelists in the second round along with each panelist’s first round rating. Second round mean consensus ratings were used by the authors to select a parsimonious sequence of questions assessing fluency within each worldview.
RESULTS: From June to September 2004, a panel of 30 experts were recruited, interviewed and surveyed (6 Jews, 4 Muslims, 5 secular humanists and 15 Christians) to generate 164 candidate questions rated in the first round of Delphi consensus methodology, during which 37 additional candidate questions were suggested. All 201 candidate questions were then rated in the second round of Delphi consensus methodology. Response rates for round 1 and 2 were 59% and 81%, respectively. Using the consensus-derived mean ratings, we created a concise interview questionnaire beginning with a general section for all respondents bearing 7 questions such as: “How does your faith influence your everyday ways of living?” A subsequent self-reported sorting question then directs interviewees to Christian, Jewish, Muslim, or Secular Humanist sections consisting of 15, 10, 12, and 6 questions, respectively. The following are examples from each one of the sections: “Who is Jesus? What is your relationship to him?”; “In what ways is the fulfillment of mitzvot central to your practice of Judaism?”; “In what ways is the concept of ‘Submission’ (to the Creator) central in your life?”; and “What relationship is there between human life and the rest of the universe?”
CONCLUSIONS: Using Delphi Consensus Methodology, we created a parsimonious interview guide of open ended questions designed to elicit fluency within each of seven theological and secular worldviews. Future work aims to validate these questions in a religiously diverse sample using methods similar to those described previously amongst a sample of self-identified Episcopalians. Adjudicated responses might then be used to train natural language processing algorithms to accelerate and automate fluency assessments. This approach, when combined with existing self-report metrics, could advance the empirical study of religion through more precise, context-sensitive assessment of worldview.