Religious Fundamentalism Scale

The Religious Fundamentalism (RF) Scale, introduced by Bob Altemeyer and Bruce Hunsberger in 1992, measures fundamentalism as a psychological attitude rather than as membership in any particular tradition. They defined it as the belief that one's religion holds a single set of fundamental, inerrant truths about humanity and deity, that this truth is opposed by forces of evil that must be resisted, and that it must be followed today according to the practices of the past. Crucially the scale is content-general: it can be answered by adherents of any religion and taps the structure of the belief rather than its specific doctrines. Built as a balanced scale with equal numbers of pro- and con-trait items to control for response bias, the RF Scale was developed alongside studies linking fundamentalism to right-wing authoritarianism and prejudice.