Fig 1.
Christian and religious unaffiliated by country, years 1998 and 2008.
Proportions of Christian-affiliated and religiously unaffiliated respondents by country for years 1998 (top) and 2008 (bottom), based on [50].
Table 1.
Number of countries, and number and % of Christian-affiliated and religiously unaffiliated respondents in the 1991, 1998 and 2008 rounds of the ISSP Religion questionnaire (Israel and Japan excluded).
Table 2.
Selected items and sociodemographic variables.
Selected items and sociodemographic (background) variables for the Christian-affiliated and religiously unaffiliated respondents (Table 1) with complete sociodemographic information and at most five missing items, in the 1998 and 2008 rounds in the ISSP Religion Cumulation dataset. The sociodemographic variables are listed in the “Item” column below the thick line after ATTEND.
Fig 2.
Pooled within-group correlation matrix.
Pooled within-group correlation matrix Rw.RELIGGRP, computed by weighting the within-group polychoric correlation matrices for the religious group (RELIGGRP), with weights proportional to group size, based on the 1998 ISSP Religion data [50].
Table 3.
Intraclass correlation coefficient ICC(1).
Intraclass correlation coefficient ICC(1) (proportion of the total variance due to group membership) for the selected items, for each of the following grouping variables: gender (SEX), age group (AGE), educational degree (DEGREE) and country (COUNTRY.NAME), based on the 1998 data [50].
Fig 3.
Solution diagrams for the two three-factor models based on the correlation matrix Rw.RELIGGRP computed using 10 and 11 items as described in the text and based on the 1998 ISSP Religion data. In this figure RMSEA is the mean square error of approximation, TLI is the Tucker-Lewis index and BIC is the Bayesian information criterion [56].
Fig 4.
Path diagrams for Models 2, 3 and 4 referred in the text. Model 2 includes both the green and blue loadings and corresponds to the ten-item model suggested by the EFA. Model 3 only includes the green loading. Model 4 only includes the blue loading.
Table 4.
Model 2: GOF indices for the measurement invariance tests.
Estimates of the GOF indices for the measurement invariance tests for gender, age group, highest educational degree, religious (un)affiliation and initial set of 24 countries (Denmark and Russia were excluded because of zero counts in the top level of variable V49 (frequency of prayer)). In this table, “config” refers to a configural model (thresholds νg, loadings Λg and intercepts τg free across the groups); “metric” refers to a metric-invariant model (thresholds νg and loadings Λg constrained to be equal across groups; intercepts τg free across the groups); “scalar” refers to a scalar-invariant model (thresholds νg, loadings Λg and intercepts τg constrained to be equal across the groups); “scalar partial” refers to a scalar-invariant model in which some of the constraints on the intercepts were released; and “strict” refers to a model in which the thresholds νg, loadings Λg, intercepts τg and residual variances Θg were constrained to be equal across the groups.
Table 5.
Model 2: Structural invariance tests.
Estimates of the GOF indices for the structural invariance (group variance-covariance and latent means) tests for model 2, for gender, age group, highest educational degree, and religious (un)affiliation. In this table, “metric” refers to a metric-invariant model (thresholds νg and loadings Λg constrained to be equal across groups; intercepts τg free across groups); “var.cov” refers to a metric-invariant model in which the variance-covariance matrices of the latent variables Φg are also constrained to be equal across the groups; “scalar” refers to a scalar-invariant model (thresholds νg, loadings Λg and intercepts τg constrained to be equal across the groups); and “means” refers to a scalar-invariant model in which the latent means κg were also constrained to be equal across the groups.
Fig 5.
Group latent variable means (κg) by gender, based on the model with scalar invariance (invariant thresholds, loadings and intercepts).
Fig 6.
Group latent variable means (κg) by age group, based on the model with scalar invariance (invariant thresholds, loadings and intercepts).
Fig 7.
Latent means by highest educational degree.
Group latent variable means (κg) by highest educational degree, based on the model with scalar invariance (invariant thresholds, loadings and intercepts).
Fig 8.
Latent means by religious (un)affiliation.
Group latent variable means (κg) by religious (un)affiliation, based on the model with scalar invariance (invariant thresholds, loadings and intercepts).
Fig 9.
Factor correlation matrices for the Christian and ‘No religion’ groups.
Factor correlation matrices for Christian and ‘No religion’ groups, based on the model with scalar invariance (invariant thresholds, loadings and intercepts).
Fig 10.
Group latent variable means (κg) by country for the 14 countries included in Model 2 with partial scalar invariance which led to acceptable fit (τ33, τ35 and τATTEND free across countries).