Article Sidebar

Download
Statistic
Read Counter : 0

Main Article Content

Abstract

The current study aimed to develop and validate the Parasocial Relationships with Religious Figures (PSR-R) scale, a multidimensional instrument designed to assess individuals' parasocial relationships with their idolized religious figures. A total of 301 participants aged 18–29 were recruited using convenience sampling, representing six religious groups in Indonesia. The scale development process involved item generation, expert evaluation, and confirmatory factor analysis to establish the structural validity of the scale. The final 25-item PSR-R scale demonstrated robust model fit (CFI = .908, RMSEA = .062, and SRMR = .607), capturing four dimensions: interest in, knowledge of, identification with, and interaction with. Internal consistency was high (? = .922), with dimension-level reliabilities ranging from .711 to .855 and significant intercorrelations among its four dimensions, supporting its validity as a multidimensional construct. Convergent validity was supported by a significant positive correlation with a measure of celebrity worship (r = .544, p < .001), suggesting that shared psychological processes underlie parasocial relationships across different domains. These findings support the PSR-R scale as a reliable and valid instrument for assessing parasocial relationships in religious contexts. By introducing a validated measurement tool, this study provides a foundation for further exploration of parasocial relationships with religious figures and their psychological implications. The scale offers theoretical and applied value for examining the psychological impact of mediated religious engagement. Future research should assess the cross-cultural generalizability of this approach, its role in identity development, and its potential applications in religious education, counseling, and mental health settings.

Keywords

celebrity worship multidimensional instrument parasocial relationship religious figure

Article Details

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

Authors who publish with INSPIRA: Indonesian Journal of Psychological Research agree to the following terms:

  1. Authors retain copyright licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial CC BY-NC 4.0, which allows others to remix, tweak, and build upon the authors' work non-commercially, and although the others' new works must also acknowledge the authors and be non-commercial, they do not have to license their derivative works on the same terms.
  2. Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (See The Effect of Open Access). In other words, authors can archive pre-print (submitted version),  post-print (accepted version), and publisher's version/PDF.

References

  1. Abraham, J., Ali, M. M., Andangsari, E. W., & Hartanti, L. E. P. (2020). Confirmatory factor analysis of celebrity worship, digital literacy, and nostalgia: Dataset of Indonesians. Data in Brief, 33, 106417. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dib.2020.106417
  2. Anastasi, A., & Urbina, S. (2016). Psychological Testing (7. ed). Pearson India.
  3. Azzman, T. S. A. T. M., Shariffadeen, M. A., & Manaf, A. M. A. (2017). Following Islamic Reality Show Personalities on Twitter: A Uses and Gratification Approach to Understanding Parasocial Interaction and Social Media Use. Intellectual Discourse, 25(Special Issue), 637–659.
  4. Bae, H.-S., Brown, W. J., & Kang, S. (2010). Social Influence of a Religious Hero: The Late Cardinal Stephen Kim Sou-hwan’s Effect on Cornea Donation and Volunteerism. Journal of Health Communication, 16(1), 62–78. https://doi.org/10.1080/10810730.2010.529489
  5. Baek, Y. M., Bae, Y., & Jang, H. (2013). Social and Parasocial Relationships on Social Network Sites and Their Differential Relationships with Users’ Psychological Well-Being. Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking, 16(7), 512–517. https://doi.org/10.1089/cyber.2012.0510
  6. Beta, A. R. (2024). Religious influencers and socially mediated cultural politics. In M. M. Skoric & N. Pang (Eds.), Research Handbook on Social Media and Society (pp. 58–69). Edward Elgar Publishing. https://doi.org/10.4337/9781800377059.00014
  7. Boyd, A., Morrow, J. A., & Rocconi, L. M. (2022). Development and Validation of the Parasocial Relationship in Social Media Survey. The Journal of Social Media in Society, 11(2), 192–208.
  8. Boyd, A. T., Rocconi, L. M., & Morrow, J. A. (2024). Construct validation and measurement invariance of the Parasocial Relationships in Social Media survey. PLOS ONE, 19(3), e0300356. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0300356
  9. Braghetta, C. C., Gorenstein, C., Wang, Y. P., Martins, C. B., Leão, F. C., Peres, M. F. P., Lucchetti, G., & Vallada, H. (2021). Development of an Instrument to Assess Spirituality: Reliability and Validation of the Attitudes Related to Spirituality Scale (ARES). Frontiers in Psychology, 12, 764132. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.764132
  10. Brown, W. J. (2018). Celebrity involvement: Parasocial interaction, identification and worship. In A. Elliott (Ed.), Routledge Handbook of Celebrity Studies (1st ed., pp. 255–270). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315776774-17
  11. Chen, Y.-Q., Huang, X.-J., Yang, F., Yang, J.-J., Zhong, J., Yao, K.-M., Kuang, J.-X., & Xu, M.-Z. (2024). A Chinese adaptation of the Patient Health Questionnaire for Adolescents (PHQ-A): Factor structure and psychometric properties. BMC Psychiatry, 24(1), 331. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12888-024-05783-3
  12. Cohen, L., Manion, L., & Morrison, K. (2013). Research Methods in Education (0 ed.). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203720967
  13. Cohen, R. J., & Swerdlik, M. E. (2018). Psychological testing and assessment (Ninth Edition). McGraw-Hill Education.
  14. Dabbagh, A., Seens, H., Fraser, J., & MacDermid, J. C. (2023). Construct validity and internal consistency of the Home and Family Work Roles Questionnaires: A cross-sectional study with exploratory factor analysis. BMC Women’s Health, 23(1), 56. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12905-023-02199-1
  15. Dibble, J. L., Hartmann, T., & Rosaen, S. F. (2016). Parasocial Interaction and Parasocial Relationship: Conceptual Clarification and a Critical Assessment of Measures: Parasocial Interaction and Parasocial Relationship. Human Communication Research, 42(1), 21–44. https://doi.org/10.1111/hcre.12063
  16. Febrian, H. (2024). Visualizing Authority: Rise of the Religious Influencers on the Instagram. Social Media + Society, 10(4), 20563051241286850. https://doi.org/10.1177/20563051241286850
  17. Garcia, D., Björk, E., & Kazemitabar, M. (2022). The A(ffect) B(ehavior) C(ognition) D(ecision) of parasocial relationships: A pilot study on the psychometric properties of the Multidimensional Measure of Parasocial Relationships (MMPR). Heliyon, 8(10), e10779. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.heliyon.2022.e10779
  18. Gleason, T. R., Theran, S. A., & Newberg, E. M. (2017). Parasocial Interactions and Relationships in Early Adolescence. Frontiers in Psychology, 8. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.00255
  19. Hair, J. F., Black, W. C., Babin, B. J., & Anderson, R. E. (2019). Multivariate data analysis (Eighth edition). Cengage.
  20. Hakim, M. A., & Liu, J. H. (2021). Development, Construct Validity, and Measurement Invariance of the Parasocial Relationship With Political Figures (PSR-P) Scale. International Perspectives in Psychology, 10(1), 13–24. https://doi.org/10.1027/2157-3891/a000002
  21. Horton, D., & Wohl, R. (1956). Mass Communication and Para-Social Interaction: Observations on Intimacy at a Distance. Psychiatry, 19(3), 215–229. https://doi.org/10.1080/00332747.1956.11023049
  22. Juanamasta, I. G., Aungsuroch, Y., Fisher, M. L., Nuryani, S. N. A., & Ayuningsih, N. N. (2023). Translation and validation study of the Indonesian version of the practice environment scale of the nursing work index. International Journal of Nursing Sciences, 10(4), 511–517. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijnss.2023.09.018
  23. Kangwanrattanakul, K., & Krägeloh, C. U. (2024). Psychometric evaluation of the WHOQOL-BREF and its shorter versions for general Thai population: Confirmatory factor analysis and Rasch analysis. Quality of Life Research, 33(2), 335–348. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11136-023-03521-y
  24. Kaplan, R. M., & Saccuzzo, D. P. (2018). Psychological testing: Principles, applications, & issues (Ninth edition). Cengage Learning.
  25. Karahan, S., Ağadayı, E., Sarı, S. A., Çelik, N., Kömürlüoğlu Tan, A., & Döğer, E. (2023). Psychometric Properties of the Turkish Validity and Reliability of the Parent Diabetes Distress Scale. Journal of Clinical Research in Pediatric Endocrinology, 15(3), 293–301. https://doi.org/10.4274/jcrpe.galenos.2023.2023-3-20
  26. Kinanggi, S. K., Akbar, Muh., & Farid, M. (2022). The Role of Religious Leaders as Opinion Leaders in Government Communications Related to COVID-19. International Journal of Science and Society, 4(4), 416–427. https://doi.org/10.54783/ijsoc.v4i4.590
  27. Lucas, K. (2020). A Parasociology: Jean Genet in the Age of Celebrity Worship. Religion and the Arts, 24(3), 290–317. https://doi.org/10.1163/15685292-02403003
  28. Maltby, J., Day, L., McCutcheon, L. E., Houran, J., & Ashe, D. (2006). Extreme celebrity worship, fantasy proneness and dissociation: Developing the measurement and understanding of celebrity worship within a clinical personality context. Personality and Individual Differences, 40(2), 273–283. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2005.07.004
  29. Mardani, D. A., & Abduh, M. (2022). Agama dan Dakwah Digital: Membentuk Karisma Online melalui Personal Minning. IN RIGHT: Jurnal Agama Dan Hak Azazi Manusia, 11(2), 135. https://doi.org/10.14421/inright.v11i2.2717
  30. Mikuláš, P., & Chalányová, O. (2017). Celebritization of religious leaders in contemporary culture. European Journal of Science and Theology, 13(6), 43–52.
  31. Muchammadun, M., Rachmad, S. H., Handiyatmo, D., Tantriana, A., Rumanitha, E., & Amrulloh, Z. (2021). Peran Tokoh Agama dalam Menangani Penyebaran Covid-19. Religious: Jurnal Studi Agama-Agama Dan Lintas Budaya, 5(1), 87–96. https://doi.org/10.15575/rjsalb.v5i1.10378
  32. Rubin, A. M., Perse, E. M., & Powell, R. A. (1985). Loneliness, parasocial interaction, and local television news viewing. Human Communication Research, 12(2), 155–180. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2958.1985.tb00071.x
  33. Salib, G. (2022). Parasocial Interactions and Relationships among Emerging Adults in Online Communities. Proceedings of the ALISE Annual Conference. https://doi.org/10.21900/j.alise.2022.1102
  34. Sovey, S., Osman, K., & Mohd-Matore, M. E. E. (2022). Exploratory and Confirmatory Factor Analysis for Disposition Levels of Computational Thinking Instrument Among Secondary School Students. European Journal of Educational Research, volume–11–2022(volume–11–issue–2–april–2022), 639–652. https://doi.org/10.12973/eu-jer.11.2.639
  35. Syed, M. (2015). Emerging Adulthood (J. J. Arnett, Ed.; Vol. 1). Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199795574.013.9
  36. Tukachinsky, R. (2011). Para-romantic love and para-friendships: Development and assessment of a multiple-parasocial relationships scale. American Journal of Media Psychology11, 3(1/2), 73–94.
  37. Tukachinsky, R., Walter, N., & Saucier, C. J. (2020). Antecedents and Effects of Parasocial Relationships: A Meta-Analysis. Journal of Communication, 70(6), 868–894. https://doi.org/10.1093/joc/jqaa034