This study aimed to determine the factors underlying grade four senior
high school (G4SHS) students’ Islamic orientation and compare them with those
of pilgrims who visited and prayed in Imam Reza Shrine in Mashhad, Iran. To
this end the 44-sentence Islamic Orientation Scale (IOS) developed by Khodadady
and Bagheri [1] was administered to 453 students. The subjection of the data to
Principal Axis Factoring and Varimax with Kaiser Normalization showed that
eight factors underlie the scale, i.e.,
social, inspirational, observant, sacrificial, humanitarian, theo-pacific, inquisitive
and charitable. Based on the microstructural approach of schema theory, the
words used in the IOS were treated as representatives of basic concepts called
schemata. These concepts combined with each other within the linguistic context
of each sentence to produce a broader concept called species. The species
represented by the sentences which loaded acceptably on the eight factors
represented genera as the second broadest concepts constituting the domain of
Islamic orientation. The domain is thus treated as the broadest concept or
construct which is measured by the scale. The schema-based analysis of results
showed that G4SHS students differed from pilgrims in their Islamic orientation
because six out of eight genera constituting the domain differed from each
other in their species, i.e., social,
inspirational, observant, sacrificial, inquisitive and charitable. The results
are discussed and suggestions are made for future researcher.