The Santa Clara Sacredness Scale

Abstract The notion that life is sacred and should be treated as such is an increasingly important perspective and virtue in a rapidly challenging, violent, and divisive world. Yet, there are few high-quality, cost-effective, relevant, and easy-to-use assessment instruments currently available to measure this construct. This paper introduces the new Santa Clara Sacredness Scale, a very brief and free to use questionnaire that assesses an individual’s perspective on sacredness. The 10-item scale was administered to a diverse group of 334 persons from the general public recruited through a snowball sampling methodology, along with several other measures to assess reliability, validity, and utility. Information regarding the scale along with preliminary psychometric data is presented. Implications for future research and use are discussed as well.