Development of religious arrogance scale

Throughout history, the theme of arrogance is accepted as a serious ethical unvirtue and thought of as the cause of societal illnesses. Although arrogance, as behaviour and feeling, has been written about and criticized in most cultures since ancient times, there is almost any quantitative research about arrogance. Moreover, scale development about arrogance is nearly limited to leadership arrogance and customer arrogance. Therefore, in this study, a scale to measure religious arrogance is aimed. This thesis consists of three parts. The first and second parts of the research are based on qualitative research methods, literature review, and analysis. Toward the aim of the study, a large amount of Islamic literature is researched, and items evaluated by Islamic scholars as indicators of religious arrogance are listed. Religious arrogance is defined as "seeing oneself superior to others for the subject which is accepted virtue by religion". The third part is based on mainly the quantitative research methods. A close-ended structured questionary consisting of 21 items is formed according to specialist opinions and used to gather data. A sample of 600 students in three universities of theology faculties is selected through convenience sampling and 567 of them completed the questionary in 2022. Exploratory and Confirmatory Factor analysis, descriptive statistics, Cronbach's alpha, Compound Reliability, Average Valu Explained, Pearson Correlation, and Wilcoxon Test are used to analyse data. According to the results of Exploratory Factor analysis, a two-factor scale structure with 6 items is gathered. The first factor is called the Ritual Dimension and the second one is called the Intellectual Dimension. These two dimensions are in line with the Islamic text. The two-dimensional structure explains 67 % of the developed Religious Arrogance Scale. Results of Confirmatory Factor analysis confirm two-dimensional scale structure with good fitness indexes (CMIN/df < 3; GFI, AGF; CFI, IFI and NFI> 0.9; RMSEA <0,08). To investigate the reliability of the scale Cronbach's alpha, Composite Reliability and test-retest analysis are used. The high coefficient alpha (0.7) and Composite Reliability (<0,72) indicate the internal consistency of the scale. According to Wilcoxon test, there is no difference between the mean rank of the first test and the second test of the scale (p>0.05). Content and structural validities of the scale are supported by following scientific scale development procedure and taking specialist opinions in items development, and results of explanatory and confirmatory factor analysis. Moreover, values of Average Variance Explained and Compound Reliability support Convergent validity and Divergent validity. The Religious Arrogance Scale is the first study on religious arrogance based on Islamic literature. Researchers can use this scale to study the arrogance of the individuals in future research in different samples and groups. Studies on the relationship between religious arrogance and similar and different concepts will contribute to the reliability and validity of the scale. Keywords: Arrogance, Religious arrogance, Religious arrogance scale