Religious Doubt Scale

The Religious Doubt Scale, associated with Bruce Hunsberger and colleagues, measures the extent to which a person doubts or questions religious beliefs and issues. Rather than asking only whether someone believes, it captures the often-overlooked experience of uncertainty — wondering whether God exists, whether scripture is true, whether evil disproves a loving deity, or whether one's tradition has things right. Respondents rate their level of doubt across a range of religious issues, and the items combine into an overall doubt score. Hunsberger, Pratt, and Pancer's longitudinal work followed religious doubts from high school into early adulthood, examining how stable doubts are, how they relate to other religious orientations such as quest and fundamentalism, and how a searching, answer-seeking stance figures in religious development.