Table of Contents

Variable:

This scale measures four dimensions of Christian ideology : (a) orthodoxy (the belief in some traditional Christian doc trines), (b) fanaticism (the desire to share Christianity with others), (c) importance (the personal significance of religion), and (d) ambivalence (the self-awareness of having contradictory attitudes toward religion). The instrument clearly assesses religious identity and ways of being religious within that identity, but it is not as clear that the items necessarily tap Christian identity. For example, the orthodoxy items refer to the church, a divine plan, and devil and hell, but there is no specific reference to God or Jesus Christ. The other dimensions simply refer to “religion.” Christians would under stand and probably agree with most of these items, but the questionnaire doesn’t seem to allow Christians to affirm many beliefs that are distinctly Christian. Interestingly, al though the instrument seems to have been used largely with Christian populations, re searchers have generally referred to the instrument as a “religious” measure (e.g., Benson et al., 1980), instead of using the more narrow concept of “Christian.”

Description:

The Orthodoxy, Fanaticism, and Importance Scales were constructed using the Likert method, which emphasizes internal consistency and discriminatory power. Each of these scales has six items with most of the items positively worded (some of the items are negatively worded).

The ambivalence scale contains only one item: “Although one is stronger than the other, there is part of me that believes in religion and part of me that does not.” Participants respond to all 19 items using a 7-point scale with the end points of “strong agreement” and “strong disagreement.”

Practical Considerations:

Putney and Middleton presented the actual items in their article, but they did not specify the instructions given participants. When the instrument is scored, a participant’s score is computed separately for each scale by re versing any negatively worded items and then summing the responses for that scale. When using the scale, Putney and Middle ton used the strategy of splitting participants into high and low categories using the theoretical midpoints for each scale (e.g., on the Orthodoxy Scale, where scores can range from 6 to 42, the cutoff for “highs” and “lows” was 24).

An interesting question is whether the scales are independent. Putney and Middle ton administered the instrument to 1,200 college and university students in the north eastern and southeastern parts of the United States. When Jewish and other non-Christian students were excluded from the analyses, 1,126 students remained. Using a non parametric measure of association (Yule’s Q), the authors found that the Orthodoxy, Fanaticism, and Importance scales were positively related. The ambivalence scale

was negatively related to the other three scales. Further, the positive relationships were stronger than the negative relation ships.

Norms/Standardization:

The only published normative data has been reported by Cygnar, Jacobson, and Noel (1977) with Catholic high school students. However, this information is hard to interpret and apply to new samples because some of the items may have been dropped from the scales and the means and standard deviations that are reported appear to be based on factor scores.

Reliability: Cygnar, Jacobson, and Noel (1977) also reported data on the reliability of the Orthodoxy, Fanaticism, and Importance Scales. To make sure the scales were unidimensional, Cygnar et al. factor-analyzed the items for each scale, dropping the items that did not load on each first factor and computing factor scores for the remaining items. Using these factor scores, the re liability coefficients for the scales were (a) orthodoxy = .50, (b) fanaticism = .49, and (c) importance= .60.

Seyfarth et al. (1984) administered the Fanaticism Scale to 124 introductory psychology students. The mean age for these students was 20.7, and 55% of the sample was male. The researchers used the Spear man-Brown prophecy formula for computing split-half reliability and the resulting co efficient was .77.

Validity:

In the Seyfarth et al. (1984) study, the fanaticism scale was used to provide construct validity for a measure of evangelism that the authors developed. This Attitude Toward Evangelism Scale included items like: (a) “I like to listen to a religious evangelist,” (b) “Religious soliciting is an infringement on my right to privacy” (re verse scored), and (c) “There is a strong need for more people to openly attempt to convert others.” When this scale was correlated with the fanaticism scale, the resulting validity coefficient was .76. Cygnar et al. (1977) administered modified versions of the ritual, ideology, knowledge, experience, and consequence scales from Faulkner and Delong (1966) along with the Orthodoxy, Fanaticism, and Importance Scales. The responses of Catholic high school students were factor analyzed and factor scores were computed for each stu dent (dropping items that did not load on the factors). When the results for all of the scales were compared, the scales from Dimensions of Religious Ideologies correlated positively with all of the Faulkner and De Jong scales (the correlations ranged from .32 to .52). The only exception to this pat tern was the Consequence Scale. This scale measures the extent to which religion is integrated into everyday life. The correlations between the Consequence Scale and the Dimensions of Religious Ideologies scales were lower (ranging from .04 to .16).