Measuring and Assessing the Impact of Illiberalism-Liberalism in the Interpretation of Religious Prescriptions on the Attitudes and Values of Publics

Regents Of The University Of Michigan - Ann Arbor, Ann Arbor MI

Investigators

Abstract

This research will investigate whether, when, and in what ways, if any, the political attitudes, values, and behavior of ordinary citizens in multiple countries are influenced by their understanding of their religion, and by their interpretation of the religion’s prescriptions and codes. What people think about important political and social issues, prominent among which are democracy and governance and the status and rights of women, is important for a variety of reasons, including many with implications for the United States and the international community more generally. Citizen attitudes, values, and behavior have significance for the character, stability, and foreign relationships of a country. Important as well are citizen orientations that predispose individuals to have either more positive or more negative judgments about societies and cultures other than their own. Data with which to examine the connection between the way a person interprets their religion and the political and social attitudes that he or she holds will be collected through original public opinion surveys in multiple countries. The Principal Investigator’s long experience with cross-national survey research, as well as the availability of trusted and highly qualified local partners in each country, ensure that representative, reliable, and valid survey data will be collected.   This research builds on and will contribute to existing research on the relationship between religion and the political attitudes, values, and behavior of ordinary citizens in multiple countries. Additionally, it addresses and seeks to fill an important gap in this literature, one pertaining to the interpretation of religious prescriptions and codes. The research will develop, and administer in original public opinion research, a new multi-item scale that will measure conceptually and empirically distinct dimensions of “illiberalism-liberalism” in the interpretation of religious prescriptions. Factor analysis will be employed to identify and measure the relevant dimensions, and bridging items will be used to establish conceptual equivalence in instances where dimensions are measured by different combinations of items in different countries. Representative public opinion surveys will be conducted in multiple countries. The principal investigators long experience with cross-national survey research, as well as the availability of trusted and highly-qualified local partners in each country, ensure that representative, reliable, and valid survey data will be collected. Prominent among the dependent variables on which the research will focus are democracy and governance and the status and rights of women. Informed by the scholarly literature, as well as by the PI’s own previous research, the study will develop and test hypotheses in which connections between dimensions of religious interpretation and these and other important individual-level orientations are specified. Hypotheses will be tested in regression-based multivariate analyses, which will include pooled analysis with country fixed effects and country specific analyses. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.