The Development and Validation of a Modesty Measure for Diverse Muslim Populations

This paper reports on the multi-phase development of an English-language modesty measure for use among Muslim populations. The process yielded a 10-item measure that has high levels of internal consistency reliability (Cronbach's α of 0.83), and has acceptable discriminant and predictive validity. Specifically although our modesty measure for Muslim women was found to be significantly correlated with measures of positive and negative religious (Islamic) coping, it was not significantly correlated with religious practice-based religiosity (discriminant validity). Further logistic modeling revealed higher modesty levels positively associated with forgoing mammography because of concerns about lack of same-sex providers (predictive validity).