Development and Validation of a Composite Short Scale for Measuring Socially Distant Attitudes toward Religious Minorities in Pakistan

Abstract

The literature extensively explores Muslim students’ attitudes towards religious minorities in Pakistan. However, most of these studies are qualitative, leaving a notable gap in the availability of self-report measures to capture genuine opinions. Furthermore, existing quantitative studies rely on simple questionnaires rather than rigorously developed and validated scales. This study addresses this gap by developing and validating an objective composite scale for measuring attitudes toward religious minorities in Pakistan. We began by creating a pool of 50 items, some adapted from existing scales and others newly created. This pool underwent careful scrutiny and discussions, resulting in a refined collection of 27 items. The reduced item pool was first piloted and then administered to a sample of university students (Sample 1, n=300) for exploratory factor analysis that resulted in a unidimensional seven-item scale named “Socially Distant Attitude towards Religious Minorities” with a Cronbach’s α of 0.87. Subsequently, confirmatory factor analysis (Sample 2, n=498) demonstrated satisfactory construct validity, as indicated by robust model fit indices: Root Mean Squared Error Approximation (RMSEA) = 0.07, Goodness of Fit Index (GFI) = 0.98, Comparative Fit Index (CFI) = 0.98, Normative Fit Index (NFI) = 0.97, Tucker Lewis Index (TLI) = 0.96, and p<0.001. The resulting composite scale holds promise for future research endeavours, and its application in subsequent studies will further validate its utility and reliability.