Methodological Approach

Abstract

Psychological assessment is undertaken to understand and evaluate various qualities, attributes, and behavioral patterns of an individual and/or to compile patterns of behavior for groups who have participated in a research study as participants. This is possible by the use of systematic and standardized ways of testing. Hence, assessment is the first step of understanding the attributes as selected by the researcher. Psychological attributes are generally inferred from responses of participants who are embedded in their social interactions and located in social contexts. The present work planned to investigate the following propositions pertaining to religion, identity, religious beliefs and practices, and well-being and relationships among them. It selected standardized measures for the assessment of the aforementioned variables. The study maintained a two-pronged approach. First, it examined how the variables of concern operate across four major religious groups, namely Hindu, Muslim, Christian, and Sikh. While doing this, variation across three developmental stages (i.e., young adult, adult, and middle adulthood) and two gender groups (i.e., males and females) was examined. The locale of the research work was limited to Northern parts of India. The measures selected were in English language and were translated into Hindi language to ensure participation by the Hindi-speaking population. The method of translation and back-translation was undertaken to check parity of the measure thus selected.