Interpretation of Secularism: A Psychological Perspective

Abstract

Postgraduate Students collected data, did statistical analysis and gave some interpretation of the as a part and parcel of their Dissertation Work for the final degree. Obviously, they don’t have the knack and ability to go in for in-depth interpretation of the results. Present research endeavour has taken up their unpublished data and tried to interpret the same with the recent literature available on Psychology of Secularism. The study was carried out on 150 persons from urban area of Rae-Bareli district but none of them were below the age of 20 years and above the age of 50 years. A “3×2” factorial design was formulated for present study which facilitate the selection of equal number of respondents on the basis of their caste and sex. Secular Attitude was measured by using “Secular Attitude Scale” (MSSAS), developed and standardized by Mehra and Sinha (1992). The means, standard deviations and two-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) were computed and finding suggests that (1) only mean value of general and SC/ST castes differ significantly; (2) the main effect of caste make significant difference so far secular attitude is concerned; and (3) male and female both respondents share similar view on secularism.