Psychometric Validation of the Questionnaire of God Representations (QGR-17) in a Russian Sample

Spirituality has been one of the most significant parts of human life since the beginning of civilization. Furthermore, in most spiritual teaching the central figure is God or the divine, and relationship to God or the divine, which is referred to as God representations in this paper, can influence personal life and mental well-being (Demir, 2019). Therefore, there is a need for a valid instrument to measure God representations which could be used with different language groups. Hence, this paper aim was the development and validation of a Russian-language version of the English God Representations Questionnaire-17 (QGR-17, Schaap-Jonker & Vrijmoeth, 2023). Expert evaluation was used for translation of the questionnaire. A sample of 222 participants of different confessions was collected using an online form. To confirm structural validity the Cronbah’s alpha test and the Confirmatory Factor Analysis were used. In order to confirm convergent and divergent validity the Purpose in Life Test (PIL, Bulkina & Kupriyanov, 2023), the Symptom Checklist-K-9 (SCL-K-9, Zolotareva, 2023) and Religious Coping Questionnaire (B-RCOPE, Shankov et al., 2022) were used. The structural validity of the questionnaire was confirmed (alpha = 0,962). The Confirmatory Factor Analysis confirmed the six-factor structure which reproduces the original QGR-17 English version structure (CFI = 0,931; RMSEA = 0,075). Convergent and divergent validity were also confirmed by correlational analysis with PIL, SCL-K-9 and B-RCOPE. A qualitative content-analysis was also conducted to identify the difficulties that respondents may face when completing the questionnaire. It was shown that for the Russian-speaking sample, the statement “God inserts power” refers to both Rule/punishment actions of God (RULP) and God's supportive action (SUP), while in the European sample this statement refers only to Rule/punishment actions. It was also noted that the idea of God as a passive subject cannot be fully considered neutral, as originally assumed. Most likely, the idea of God as a passive observer may be associated with a negative attitude towards God. The result of current research is the development of the first valid quantitative instrument for the God representations measurement which could be used in Russian-speaking samples. The developed questionnaire may be limited in application to atheists, agnostics and spiritual, but not religious, people. In addition, the study did not collect enough data from representatives of such widespread religious movements as Islam and Buddhism, so it is difficult to say about the applicability of the questionnaire for these religious groups. Moreover, a number of limitations of the questionnaire include the incompleteness of the representations of God representations by it. Further research is required to overcome these limitations.