Abstract
The Attitudes about the Bible scale is a foundational, single-item categorical measurement instrument originally developed by the Survey Research Center (SRC) at the University of Michigan for the 1964 American National Election Study (ANES). Cataloged and evaluated by John P. Robinson and Phillip R. Shaver in their seminal compendium, Measures of Political Attitudes (1969), the instrument was designed to capture an individual's epistemological orientation toward scriptural authority, ranging from strict biblical literalism and inerrancy to theological modernism, humanistic rationalism, and complete secular rejection. Structured as a forced-choice, four-point ordinal typology with an explicit non-committal option ("Don't know"), the scale measures the cognitive-ideological dimension of religious orthodoxy. Despite comprising only a single item, this instrument has served for more than half a century as one of the most powerful and robust predictors of political behavior, social conservatism, civil liberties attitudes, moral values, and ideological polarization in social science research. This article provides a comprehensive psychometric and theoretical analysis of the Attitudes about the Bible scale, detailing its construct definition, theoretical lineage, criterion-related and construct validity, test-retest temporal stability across multi-wave national panels, latent class characteristics, and continued relevance in contemporary political psychology and the sociology of religion.
Keywords
Attitudes about the Bible, Biblical literalism, religious fundamentalism, scriptural authority, American National Election Studies, Survey Research Center, religious orthodoxy, political attitudes, Christian nationalism, religious epistemology
Authors
The Attitudes about the Bible measurement item was conceptualized, operationalized, and fielded by the research staff of the Survey Research Center (SRC), a division of the Institute for Social Research (ISR) at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. The scale was incorporated into the 1964 National Election Study under the auspices of the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR). The psychometric profiling, methodological documentation, and academic dissemination of the scale as a standardized metric were executed by John P. Robinson (University of Maryland) and Phillip R. Shaver (University of California, Davis), who published it within their landmark volume, Measures of Political Attitudes (1969), sponsored by the Institute for Social Research.
Purpose
The primary purpose of the Attitudes about the Bible scale is to quantify an individual's cognitive stance toward scriptural authority and divine revelation. In the mid-twentieth century, empirical political scientists and social psychologists recognized that nominal denominational affiliation (e.g., classifying respondents merely as "Protestant," "Catholic," or "Jewish") failed to capture the deep ideological fissures emerging within American religion and politics. Denominations were increasingly fractured along theological lines, dividing into fundamentalist/evangelical and modernist/mainline factions. The Survey Research Center sought an efficient, parsimonious survey item capable of distinguishing between these theological worldviews without requiring extensive batteries of doctrinal questions.
In both clinical and research settings, the instrument provides an index of theological traditionalism and religious orthodoxy. Research applications span political psychology, sociology, public opinion research, and cultural anthropology. Specifically, the scale was constructed to:
- Differentiate individuals who view scripture as the literal, inerrant word of God from those who adopt allegorical, humanistic, or secular interpretations.
- Predict socio-political behavior, including partisan identification, presidential voting choice, and attitudes toward contentious social issues such as civil rights, reproductive autonomy, gender roles, school prayer, and scientific consensus.
- Assess cognitive rigidity, dogmatism, and epistemic closure within frameworks examining authoritarianism and fundamentalism.
- Serve as a primary demographic and ideological control variable in multi-wave national probability surveys, including the American National Election Studies (ANES) and related adaptations in the General Social Survey (GSS).
The theoretical rationale rests on the premise that an individual's view of biblical authority serves as an "epistemic master key." The belief that an ancient sacred text constitutes absolute, error-free divine truth systematically structures how people process scientific evidence, moral dilemmas, legal principles, and political authority. Consequently, the instrument was engineered to delineate the boundary between sacred absolutism and secular rationalism.
Psychological Construct
The construct measured by this instrument is Scriptural Epistemic Authority, frequently operationalized in psychological literature as Biblical Literalism or Theological Orthodoxy. Rather than assessing affective religious feelings (e.g., religious devotion or attachment to God) or behavioral practices (e.g., frequency of prayer or church attendance), this construct isolates the cognitive-epistemological status granted to sacred scripture in determining truth. The construct spans four distinct ideological positions along an underlying continuum of divine intervention and authority:
1. Biblical Inerrancy and Strict Literalism
Represented by the statement: "The Bible is God's Word and all it says is true." This pole reflects an epistemological stance wherein the text is considered plenary, divinely inspired, historically accurate, and morally infallible. Individuals endorsing this position operate within a deductive cognitive framework where divine revelation supersedes empirical observation or secular critique. In social psychology, this stance correlates strongly with epistemic need for closure, low tolerance for ambiguity, and traditional authority adherence.
2. Divine Inspiration with Human Fallibility
Represented by the statement: "The Bible was written by men inspired by God but it contains some human errors." This category represents theological modernism or mainline Protestant orthodoxy. It bridges transcendent belief with rationalist skepticism. The respondent acknowledges a sacred origin but concedes historical, cultural, and contextual limitations. Epistemologically, this position allows for the integration of scientific knowledge (e.g., evolutionary biology, geology) with personal faith, demonstrating higher cognitive flexibility.
3. Secular Humanism and Cultural Appreciation
Represented by the statement: "The Bible is a good book because it was written by wise men but God had nothing to do with it." This position strips the document of supernatural origin while retaining its cultural, moral, and literary value. It embodies a secular-rationalist perspective that respects tradition through a humanistic lens. The psychological mechanism here is moral reasoning rooted in human experience rather than divine mandate.
4. Radical Skepticism and Historical Obsolescence
Represented by the statement: "The Bible was written by men who lived so long ago that it is worth very little today." This response reflects an overt rejection of both divine inspiration and contemporary relevance. It captures an explicitly secular, anti-traditional, or non-theistic viewpoint that views ancient religious texts as anachronistic impediments to modern progress.
5. Cognitive Ambivalence or Uncertainty ("Don't know")
The inclusion of the explicit non-attitude category captures respondents who lack theological interest, possess unformed cognitive schema regarding religion, or experience ideological conflict between competing religious and secular paradigms.
Theoretical Framework
The development of the Attitudes about the Bible scale is grounded in several major theoretical traditions within sociology, social psychology, and political science.
Multidimensional Religiosity Theory
Prior to the 1960s, survey research frequently treated religiosity as a unidimensional variable, typically measured by church affiliation or attendance frequency. However, theorists such as Charles Y. Glock and Rodney Stark (1965) posited that religiosity is fundamentally multidimensional, comprising at least five distinct domains: ideological (belief), intellectual (knowledge), ritualistic (practice), experiential (feeling), and consequential (secular effects). The Attitudes about the Bible scale directly taps into the ideological dimension, serving as a clean indicator of the cognitive orthodoxy that underlies religious identity.
Epistemic Authority and Cognitive Consistency
From a cognitive psychology perspective, scriptural literalism serves as a primary source of epistemic authority (Kruglanski, 1989). An individual who attributes absolute epistemic authority to scripture minimizes cognitive dissonance when navigating complex moral and existential choices. According to cognitive consistency and schema theories, individuals possess organized knowledge structures that guide information processing. A literalist schema provides unequivocal, heuristic rules regarding social order, sexuality, authority, and destiny, reducing subjective uncertainty.
Culture Wars and Social Identity Theory
The instrument also reflects James Davison Hunter's (1991) "Culture Wars" hypothesis, which asserts that modern political conflict is not divided along traditional denominational lines (e.g., Catholic vs. Protestant), but rather along an ontological axis dividing orthodox and progressive moral visions. Those who ground moral truth in external, transcendent, unchanging authority (orthodox) inevitably clash with those who ground truth in human experience, rationality, and historical progress (progressives). The SRC Bible item operationalizes this precise fault line.
Validity
The construct, criterion, convergent, and discriminant validity of the Attitudes about the Bible scale have been documented extensively across decades of empirical political and psychological research.
Construct Validity
Construct validity is evidenced by the scale's strong alignment with known correlates of religious orthodoxy. Studies utilizing the 1964 ANES dataset and subsequent iterations consistently show that endorsement of the literalist option (Option 1) correlates strongly with high frequencies of personal prayer, regular attendance at worship services, self-identification as an evangelical or born-again Christian, and negative attitudes toward theological liberalism. Conversely, endorsement of the secular options (Options 3 and 4) correlates with high levels of scientific literacy, formal educational attainment, and secular political affiliations.
Criterion-Related and Predictive Validity
The scale possesses remarkable predictive validity, particularly regarding social, legal, and political attitudes. In Robinson and Shaver's (1969) analysis of the 1964 ANES data, responses to this item accounted for significant variance in voter choice, racial integration attitudes, and civil liberties tolerance. Over decades of subsequent research, biblical literalism as measured by this item has demonstrated robust predictive power in multivariate regression models predicting:
- Opposition to abortion rights and same-sex marriage, often exhibiting beta weights exceeding those of party identification and income.
- Skepticism toward biological evolution and anthropogenic climate change.
- Support for traditional patriarchal family structures and biblical gender roles.
- Endorsement of Christian nationalism and capital punishment.
Convergent and Discriminant Validity
The scale converges substantially with longer psychometric batteries, such as Altemeyer and Hunsberger's (1992) Religious Fundamentalism Scale ($r = .65$ to $.78$) and Glock and Stark's Orthodoxy Index ($r > .70$). Discriminant validity has been established by demonstrating that attitudes toward the Bible remain statistically distinguishable from general political conservatism, educational attainment, and socioeconomic status. That is, a highly educated individual may still hold literalist views, and the item isolates the theological component independently of cognitive ability or income.
Reliability
Because the original Attitudes about the Bible item is a single-item categorical indicator, conventional metrics of internal consistency (such as Cronbach's alpha or McDonald's omega) cannot be computed directly for the isolated question. Psychometric evaluation of such single-item indicators relies primarily on test-retest reliability, panel stability coefficients, and latent Markov modeling.
Temporal Stability in Multi-Wave Panels
Data from the ANES longitudinal panel studies (such as the 1964–1966–1968 panel) demonstrate exceptionally high temporal stability for this item. Pearson and polychoric stability coefficients over two- and four-year intervals routinely fall between $.72$ and $.84$, indicating that personal attitudes toward scriptural authority represent enduring ideological commitments rather than fleeting non-attitudes or response artifacts.
Measurement Error Estimation
In structural equation modeling (SEM) applications utilizing Wiley and Wiley (1970) or Heise (1969) models for panel data with measurement error, the estimated reliability coefficient ($
ho$) for the SRC biblical attitude item consistently ranges from$.80$ to $.88$. This confirms that despite its brevity, the question has low random measurement error compared to standard single-item attitudinal metrics in survey research.
Factor Analysis
While single-item measures do not generate correlation matrices for standard exploratory factor analysis (EFA) on their own, psychometricians have evaluated the item within broader batteries of religious, psychological, and political indicators.
Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) Loadings
When included in structural equation models alongside multi-item indicators of religious orthodoxy (such as belief in an afterlife, belief in the devil, and subjective importance of religion), the Attitudes about the Bible item consistently demonstrates standardized factor loadings ($lambda$) ranging from $.75$ to $.91$. These high loadings confirm that the item serves as a central indicator of the latent religious orthodoxy construct.
Item Response Theory (IRT) and Latent Class Analysis (LCA)
In Graded Response Models (Samejima, 1969) applied to survey items measuring religious traditionalism, the SRC Bible item demonstrates exceptionally high discrimination parameters ($lpha > 2.0$), indicating that it effectively differentiates respondents across the entire spectrum of latent religious traditionalism ($ heta$).
Latent Class Analysis (LCA) consistently reveals that the four substantive categories map cleanly onto distinct ideological profiles within the population:
- Class 1 (Traditionalists/Fundamentalists): Overwhelming probability of endorsing Option 1 (> 90%); characterized by doctrinal exclusivity and political traditionalism.
- Class 2 (Accommodationists/Modernists): High probability of endorsing Option 2; characterized by institutional participation paired with intellectual flexibility.
- Class 3 (Secularists/Humanists): Endorsement divided between Options 3 and 4; characterized by naturalistic worldviews and minimal institutional religious participation.
Instrument / Measurement Tool
The structured parameters of the Attitudes about the Bible scale are detailed below:
- Test Type: Single-item categorical/ordinal self-report survey question.
- Format: Forced-choice closed-ended survey prompt with discrete thematic options.
- Administration Mode: Face-to-face personal interview, computer-assisted telephone interview (CATI), or self-administered web-based questionnaire.
- Item Count: 1 primary multi-part item containing four substantive response alternatives and one residual non-substantive option.
- Response Categories:
- 1 = The Bible is God's Word and all it says is true.
- 2 = The Bible was written by men inspired by God but it contains some human errors.
- 3 = The Bible is a good book because it was written by wise men but God had nothing to do with it.
- 4 = The Bible was written by men who lived so long ago that it is worth very little today.
- 8 = Don't know (residual / spontaneous).
- Scoring and Coding Protocols:
- Ordinal Scale: Frequently coded $1 = \text{Lowest scriptural authority}$ (Option 4) to $4 = \text{Highest scriptural authority}$ (Option 1) to treat the construct as a continuous interval-like proxy for biblical orthodoxy in linear regression.
- Dummy Variable Coding: In political science research, Option 1 is frequently isolated as a binary indicator ($1 = \text{Biblical Inerrantist/Literalist}$, $0 = \text{All other responses}$) to examine the unique behavioral impact of Christian fundamentalism.
- Categorical/Nominal Coding: Analyzed using multinomial logistic regression with Option 2 (Modernist) or Option 3 (Secular) serving as the baseline reference category.
- Handling "Don't Know": Code 8 is typically treated as missing system data or isolated as a discrete category when analyzing non-attitudes and cognitive disengagement.
Permissions & Fee and Test Year
The Attitudes about the Bible scale was introduced in 1964 as part of the 1964 National Election Study by the Survey Research Center at the University of Michigan, and subsequently documented in Robinson and Shaver's 1969 volume Measures of Political Attitudes. Because the data and instruments generated by the American National Election Studies and the Institute for Social Research are supported by public research grants (including funding from the National Science Foundation) and intended for the broader scientific community, the instrument resides in the public domain. It is accessible for scholarly, educational, and non-commercial research without royalty fees or formal copyright permission, provided that appropriate scholarly attribution is accorded to the Survey Research Center and ICPSR.
References
- Altemeyer, B., & Hunsberger, B. (1992). Authoritarianism, religious fundamentalism, quest, and prejudice. International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, 2(2), 113–133. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15327582ijpr0202_5
- Glock, C. Y., & Stark, R. (1965). Religion and society in tension. Rand McNally.
- Heise, D. R. (1969). Separating reliability and stability in test-retest correlation. American Sociological Review, 34(1), 93–101. https://doi.org/10.2307/2092790
- Hunter, J. D. (1991). Culture wars: The struggle to define America. Basic Books.
- Kellstedt, L. A., & Smidt, C. E. (1991). Measuring religious fundamentalism: An analysis of alternative operational strategies. Review of Religious Research, 33(3), 259–278. https://doi.org/10.2307/3511874
- Kruglanski, A. W. (1989). Lay epistemics and human knowledge: Cognitive and motivational bases. Plenum Press. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-0927-5
- Robinson, J. P., & Shaver, P. R. (1969). Measures of political attitudes. Survey Research Center, Institute for Social Research, University of Michigan.
- Samejima, F. (1969). Estimation of latent ability using a pattern of response. Psychometrika Monograph Supplement, 34(2, Pt. 2), 1–100. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03372160
- Wiley, D. E., & Wiley, J. A. (1970). The estimation of measurement error in panel data. American Sociological Review, 35(1), 112–117. https://doi.org/10.2307/2093858
- Woodberry, R. D., & Smith, C. S. (1998). Fundamentalism et al.: Conservative Protestants in America. Annual Review of Sociology, 24(1), 25–56. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.soc.24.1.25