The International Journal of Indian Psychology ISSN 2348-5396 (e) | ISSN: 2349-3429 (p) Volume 3, Issue 3, No.3, DIP: 18.01.049/20160303 ISBN: 978-1-365-03419-0 http://www.ijip.in | April - June, 2016 © 2016 I S Dangi, Y Nagle; licensee IJIP. This is an Open Access Research distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any Medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Development and Validation of Religious Belief System Scale Shivani Dangi 1 *, Y K Nagle 2 ABSTRACT The literature cites multiple definitions for religiosity, with little consensus among researchers. Religiosity has been associated with a myriad of positive outcomes in both adolescents and adults. Religiosity refers to the degree to which a person adheres to his or her religious values, beliefs and practices and uses them in daily life. Religiosity is still an emerging concept in the developing countries such as India, though rich culture has enriched in the past. Confining to various definitions of Religiosity the study attempts to evolve a Religious belief System scale in an Indian context. With exploration of literature and expert reviews, various attributes of belief System scale was initiated with a pool of 164 items. These items were subjected to experts’ opinion and reduced to 136. The scale was administered on a sample of 456 participants and the item analysis was carried out the having more than 0.35and above value were retained for factor analysis. After initial factor analyses the scale was again administered on a sample of 550 participants. The principal component analyses were employed and 48 items were retained covering three factor i.e. Belief, Attitude and values. The measure demonstrated high internal consistency and good test-retest reliability as well as validity. Keywords: Religiosity, Belief System, Factor Analysis, Adolescents. Religious faith, beliefs, and activities are important aspects of the lives of adolescents. Although researchers have found a general age trend for religiousness to decline from childhood through adolescence (Benson, Donahue, & Erickson, 1989; King, Elder, & Whitbeck, 1997), Religious practices differ by culture, political boundary, boundary, local community, and individual, some form of religion is influential, even central, in the lives of many people across the globe. Religion is an important context for development because it provides a means of socialization in areas such as moral behavior and offers emotional support to individuals from the cradle to the grave. Given cognitive advances during adolescence including increased abilities to think abstractly and understand symbolism, it is important to study the impact of religion during this stage. 1 Senior Research Fellow, Defence Institute of Psychological Research, DRDO, Delhi 2 Scientist ‘F’ Defence Institute of Psychological Research, DRDO, Delhi *Responding Author