A Multidimensional Measure of Religious Involvement for African Americans

This article describes the confirmation and validation of a multidimensional measure of religious involvement using data from the National Survey of Black Americans (N = 2,107). This model was developed through a multistep strategy of confirmatory factor analysis and structural-equation modeling. First, a three-dimensional factor structure comprising organizational, nonorganizational, and subjective religiosity was confirmed for twelve religious indicators. This measurement model was found to exhibit excellent overall fit; it compared favorably to alternative models: and all hypothesized factor loadings were strong and statistically significant. Second, several constructs identified by prior research as correlates of religious involvement (gender, age, education, region, and urbanicity) were found to exhibit significant associations with one or more dimensions of the model. All analyses were conducted in LISREL 8.03, using maximum-likelihood estimation and a strategy of split-sample replication.