Construction and Validation of the Critical Religious Thinking Scale for Pakistani University Students

The purpose of this research paper was to construct and validate a critical religious thinking scale for the university students in Pakistan. The convenient sampling technique was used to collect data from the sample. The scale was developed in three studies. Study 1 consisted of three phases. Phase 1 consists of construct conceptualization through literature review, semi-structured interviews, 2 focus group discussions, initial item pool generation through thematic analysis, and review of the item pool through a committee approach. Phase 2 constitutes a pilot study to assess the accuracy of initial phase direction by analyzing data of N = 108 university students through SPSS-22. Phase 3 consists of exploratory factor analysis on data of N = 511 university students. The result of exploratory factor analysis revealed a unidimensional factor structure of the critical religious thinking scale, which consisted of 8 items with 50.28% total variance (α = .89). Study 2 consisted of confirmatory factor analysis, which was run on N = 300 data from university students. CFA result indicates good model fit indices and confirms the unidimensional structure obtained through EFA. In study 3, the convergent and divergent validity of the scale was established on an independent sample of N = 204 university students to ensure the psychometric soundness of the scale. The results show evidence of convergent validity as peace of mind, curiosity and exploration, and self-efficacy had a significant positive correlation with critical religious thinking among university students, and divergent validity as status consumption had a non-significant relationship with critical religious thinking among university students. Furthermore, the gaps, recommendations, and practical implications of this paper were also debated.