A Day of Judgment: a Study on Turkish Muslims Students

Abstract

The sacred texts in Judaism, Christianity and Islam all advocate the idea of a Day of Judgment following death. The aims of the present study were (1) to investigate the psychometric properties of the Belief in a Day of Judgment Scale (Beshai and Lester 2013), (2) to explore gender- differences in these beliefs, and (3) to investigate differences in beliefs about the Judgment Day across academic disciplines in sampled students. A sample of 275 female and 110 male Turkish students was recruited from six academic disciplines: English language and literature, sociology, mathematics, psychological counseling, divinity, and nursing. Participants responded to the Turkish version of the Belief in a Day of Judgment Scale. Reliability of the scale from this sample revealed a Cronbach's a of 0.92, and a principal component analysis extracted two components labeled Belief in a Day of Judgment and Bad Behavior/Actions Toward Others. Men and women did not differ in scores, but the discipline-related differences were significant. Further research should use a representative sample derived from the general population in Turkey and explore comparisons among Jewish, Christian, and Muslim samples.