Validating the Islamic Orientation Scale with Grade Four Senior High Schools Students and Comparing Its Underlying Factors with Those of Pilgrims of Imam Reza Shrine: A Schema-Based Approach

This study aimed to determine the factors underlying grade four senior high school (G4SHS) students’ Islamic orientation and compare them with those of pilgrims who visited and prayed in Imam Reza Shrine in Mashhad, Iran. To this end the 44-sentence Islamic Orientation Scale (IOS) developed by Khodadady and Bagheri [1] was administered to 453 students. The subjection of the data to Principal Axis Factoring and Varimax with Kaiser Normalization showed that eight factors underlie the scale, i.e., social, inspirational, observant, sacrificial, humanitarian, theo-pacific, inquisitive and charitable. Based on the microstructural approach of schema theory, the words used in the IOS were treated as representatives of basic concepts called schemata. These concepts combined with each other within the linguistic context of each sentence to produce a broader concept called species. The species represented by the sentences which loaded acceptably on the eight factors represented genera as the second broadest concepts constituting the domain of Islamic orientation. The domain is thus treated as the broadest concept or construct which is measured by the scale. The schema-based analysis of results showed that G4SHS students differed from pilgrims in their Islamic orientation because six out of eight genera constituting the domain differed from each other in their species, i.e., social, inspirational, observant, sacrificial, inquisitive and charitable. The results are discussed and suggestions are made for future researcher.