Author ORCID Identifier
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5371-9738
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1988-3654
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3801-0752
Abstract
Although religiosity may appear straightforward to measure empirically, no single survey item captures it fully. This limitation is particularly evident in societies where belief in God is widespread: belief may not correspond to religious attendance, prayer frequency, or self- description as a religious person. Treating these differences as merely methodological would obscure important variation in how religiosity is expressed. A comparison of five empirical indicators of religiosity in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan. It examines how belief in God, the importance of God in life, religious attendance, prayer frequency, and religious self-description converge or diverge. The analysis uses World Values Survey Wave 7 data from 3,726 respondents. Descriptive statistics, Kruskal–Wallis tests, Dunn post-hoc comparisons, chi-square tests with Cramér’s V, and multinomial logistic regression were applied. The results show that the five indicators do not follow a uniform pattern. Although belief in God is high in all three countries, religious practice and religious self- description vary across them. The findings should not be generalized to Central Asia as a whole because the study covers only three post-Soviet national samples. Within this scope, the analysis shows that religiosity is multidimensional and cannot be represented adequately by a single indicator.
Recommended Citation
Utebayeva, Dinara; Alpysbay, Margulan; and Kuranbek, Asset
(2026)
"Belief, Religious Practice, and Religious Self-Description: A Comparative Analysis of World Values Survey Wave 7 Data From Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan,"
Occasional Papers on Religion in Eastern Europe: Vol. 46
:
Iss.
9
, Article 2.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.55221/2693-2229.2857
Available at:
https://digitalcommons.georgefox.edu/ree/vol46/iss9/2