Dataset on the relations between religious and secular attitudes.

This article presents data that examines the relationship between Religious orientation (Extrinsic, Intrinsic, and Quest), Religious fundamentalism, Secularism of state, Attitudes toward pre-implantation genetic diagnosis, Attitudes toward embryonic stem cells research, Attitudes toward same-sex marriage, Attitude towards adoption by same-sex couples, and Social desirability. The sample consists of 312 Italians, who completed a questionnaire containing measures of investigate construct. Participants were contacted in various places and asked to complete a questionnaire individually. Only participants who said they were Italian and Catholic were included in this dataset. All participants were informed that their responses would remain confidential. Sample demographics, descriptive statistics, and correlations among measures were provided.

Data description

This data paper reports questionnaire (see “questionnaire” file in supplementary file), raw data (for each subject, answers to each item and aggregate scores of each measures are reported; see “data” file in supplementary file), demographic statistics of the sample (sex, age, education; see Table 1), descriptive statistics of the measures (means, standard deviations, and alphas; see Table 2), and correlations among them (see Table 3). Moreover, meaning of demographic variables values and abbreviation used in the data file, as well as SPSS syntax to compute variables mean are provided (see “annex” file in supplementary file).

Table 1

Sample demographics: gender, age, and educational level of participants.

Variables	Category	Frequency
		Number	Percent
Gender	Female	174	55.8
	Male	138	44.2
Age	>30	115	36.9
	31–40	58	18.6
	41–50	69	22.1
	51–60	57	18.3
	61 and above	13	4.2
Education	No qualification	2	0.6
	Primary school diploma	6	1.9
	Secondary school diploma	43	13.8
	High school diploma	158	50.6
	Degree	103	33.0

Table 2

Descriptive statistics: Extrinsic orientation, Intrinsic orientation, Quest orientation, Religious Fundamentalism, Secularism of State, Attitudes toward pre-implantation genetic diagnosis, Attitudes toward embryonic stem cells research, Attitudes toward same-sex marriage, Attitude towards adoption by same-sex couples, and Social desirability.

Variables	Reliability coefficient (Cronbach's Alpha)	Mean	SD
Extrinsic orientation	.676	3.819	1.392
Intrinsic orientation	.886	4.559	1.653
Quest orientation	.726	4.247	1.424
Religious Fundamentalism	.771	3.212	1.076
Secularism of State	.873	4.410	1.371
Attitudes toward pre-implantation genetic diagnosis	.813	5.084	1.577
Attitudes toward embryonic stem cells research	.813	4.780	1.630
Attitudes toward same-sex marriage	.856	3.791	1.956
Attitude towards adoption by same-sex couples	.680	3.119	1.541
Social desirability	.645	4.727	0.902

Table 3

Correlations among Extrinsic orientation, Intrinsic orientation, Quest orientation, Religious Fundamentalism, Secularism of State, Attitudes toward pre-implantation genetic diagnosis, Attitudes toward embryonic stem cells research, Attitudes toward same-sex marriage, Attitude towards adoption by same-sex couples, and Social desirability.

Variables		1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10
1	Extrinsic orientation	1
2	Intrinsic orientation	.470***	1
3	Quest orientation	.015	−.115*	1
4	Religious Fundamentalism	.426***	.596***	−.275***	1
5	Secularism of State	−.481***	−.631***	.147**	−.551***	1
6	Attitudes toward pre-implantation genetic diagnosis	.048	−.316***	.093	−.351***	.258***	1
7	Attitudes toward embryonic stem cells research	−.018	−.246***	.093	−.349***	.245***	.621***	1
8	Attitudes toward same-sex marriage	−.158**	−.387***	.230***	−.463***	.407***	.292***	.227***	1
9	Attitude towards adoption by same-sex couples	−.026	−.297***	.182**	−.291***	.259***	.175**	.185**	.506***	1
10	Social desirability	.136*	.337***	−.185**	.142*	−.179**	−.034	−.040	−.151**	−.114*	1

*p < .05 ** < p .01 ***p < .001.

Data presented in this paper consists of a convenience sample of Catholic Italians, recruited in various places by psychology students during a methodology course. All participants were informed that their responses would remain confidential. Ethical approval for the study was granted by the principal investigator's institution. Only participants who said they were Catholic and who were born and currently lived in Italy were included in the sample. The sample provided in this paper consisted of 312 participants (174 female and 138 male) aged between 18 and 70 years (Mean = 38.503, DS = 13.627). With regard to age group, 36.9% were less than 30 years old, 22.1% were aged between 41 and 50 years, 18.6% between 31 and 40 years, 18.3 between 51 and 60 years, and 4.2 were over 61 years old. Regarding educational level 50.6% had a high school education, 33% had a university education, 13.8% had a lower secondary school education, 1.9% had a primary school education, and 0.6% had no education qualification. Sample demographics are presented in Table 1.

Experimental design, materials, and methods

Data was collected using a questionnaire containing measures of investigating constructs (see “questionnaire” file in supplementary file; variables names, used in the “data” file, are reported near corresponding item between square brackets).

To measure religious orientations, 14 items (four items measuring extrinsic orientation, six items measuring intrinsic orientation, and four items measuring quest orientation) taken from the Religious Orientation Scale proposed by Allport and Ross [1] and the Religious Life Inventory proposed by Batson Schoenrade, and Ventis [2] were used (see also Voci, Bosetti, Veneziani, [3]). Participants provide their answers on a 7-point scale ranging from 1 (“Not describing me at all”) to 7 (“Describing me very well”). To investigate religious fundamentalism, eight items were taken from the scale by Altemeyer and Hunsberger [4] (see also Bosetti, Voci, Pagotto [5]) were used. To detect secularism of state, eight items of the Secularism of State Scale proposed by Hichy, Rodríguez Espartal, Trifiletti, and Di Bernardo [6] were used. With regards to issues involving embryos, participants were asked to answer four items investigating attitude toward pre-implantation genetic diagnosis and four items investigating attitude toward embryonic stem cells research, both measures were proposed by Hichy and Di Marco [7]. Regarding gay and lesbian civil rights, participants answered to four items measuring attitudes towards same-sex marriage and four items measuring attitudes towards adoption by same-sex couples, both measures were proposed by Hichy, Coen, and Di Marco [8]. All that measures required participants to provide their answers on a 7-point Likert scale ranging from 1 (“Totally disagree”) to 7 (“Totally agree”), with 4 meaning “neither agree, nor disagree”. Participants also completed nine items to measure social desirability derived from Crowne and Marlowe's scale [9] (see also Manganelli Rattazzi, Canova, and Marcorin [10]). In this case, the 7-point evaluation scale was ranged from 1 (“Definitely false”) to 7 (“Definitely true”).

For each variable, the average of the items that compose it has been calculated (see “annex” file in supplementary file, for the SPSS syntax to compute variables mean). High scores reflected high levels of the variable. Descriptive statistics of the measures are reported in Table 2 and correlations are reported in Table 3. Data is processed using SPSS24.

Conflict of Interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Specifications Table

Subject	Social psychology
Specific subject area	Psychology of religion and political psychology
Type of data	Tables
How data were acquired	Survey with questionnaire (see “questionnaire” file in supplementary file)
Data format	Raw, Analyzed
Parameters for data collection	Only participants who said they were Catholic and who were born and lived in Italy were included in the sample.
Description of data collection	Participants were contacted in various places and asked to complete an anonymous questionnaire individually.
Data source location	Region: SicilyCountry: Italy
Data accessibility	With the article (see “data” file in supplementary file)

Value of the Data• These data are useful to understand the relationship between religion, secularism, and issues often related to both, such as gay civil rights and issues involving embryos. • More specifically, these data can be useful to better understand how different kinds of religiosity are related to secularism, same-sex marriage and parenting, and pre-implantation genetic diagnosis and embryonic stem cells research. • The data will be useful for researchers interested in the psychology of religion and political psychology, as well as for researchers interested in gay civil rights and issues involving embryos. • The study can be replicated to other countries, to make a comparison between them. • These data could represent a source of information about the influence of social desirability on measure detecting religion, secularism, and attitude toward pre-implantation genetic diagnosis, embryonic stem cells research, same-sex marriage, and adoption by same-sex couples.