Description

The Duke Religion Index (DUREL) is a brief and widely used psychometric tool developed to assess three key dimensions of religiosity: organized religious activity, non-organized religious activity, and intrinsic religiosity. DUREL was developed by Koenig and his colleagues at Duke University and is commonly used in epidemiological and clinical studies.

Objective

The primary objective of DUREL is to provide a short, reliable, and valid means of measuring religiosity in various populations. This tool helps in understanding how religiosity impacts individuals’ health and well-being, and it is used to investigate the relationship between religiosity and psychological, social, and health outcomes.

Analysis

DUREL consists of 5 questions that cover the following three dimensions:
Organized Religious Activity (ORA): Refers to participation in religious services or activities, such as attending church or participating in religious groups.
Question 1: How often do you attend religious services?
Non-Organizational Religious Activity (NORA): Involves individual religious practices, such as prayer, studying religious texts, or personal worship.
Question 2: How often do you engage in private religious activities, such as prayer, meditation, or reading religious texts?
Intrinsic Religiosity (IR): Assesses the degree to which religious beliefs and values influence an individual’s daily life and behavior.
Questions 3-5: These questions ask participants to rate statements about the importance of religion in their life and how their religious beliefs guide their daily actions.

Scoring

The responses to the DUREL questions are scored on a Likert scale, with options ranging from “Never” to “Very Often” for the first two questions, and from “Strongly Disagree” to “Strongly Agree” for the last three questions. The scores are then combined to generate overall scores for each dimension of religiosity.

Bibliography

Koenig, H. G., Meador, K. G., & Parkerson, G. R. (1997). Religion Index for Psychiatric Research. The American Journal of Psychiatry, 154(6), 885-886.
Koenig, H. G., Parkerson, G. R., & Meador, K. G. (1997). Religion Index for Psychiatric Research: A 5-item measure for use in health outcome studies. American Journal of Psychiatry, 154, 885-886.
Koenig, H. G., King, D. E., & Carson, V. B. (2012). Handbook of Religion and Health. Oxford University Press.
Koenig, H. G. (2001). Religion and Medicine II: Religion, Mental Health, and Related Behaviors. International Journal of Psychiatry in Medicine, 31(1), 97-109.