Construction of a Religious Motivation Questionnaire

The paper describes the construction of a new religious motivation questionnaire. The construction was preceeded by an analysis which revealed that the existing instruments for assessing religious motivation have deficiencies and, most importantly, may not be suitable for use with persons in adolescence or younger. In the first phase of the questionnaire construction, a semi-structured interview was used on a sample of 111 respondents aged 10–25 from Belgrade. The interview findings suggested the presence of religious motivation dimensions which are not contained in the existing instruments. In the second phase, an initial pool of items, formulated based on interview answers, was administered to a sample of 354 secondary school and university students from Belgrade. Principal component analysis revealed five dimensions of religious motivation measured by the constructed questionnaire: religion as ultimate value; religion as a means of wish-fulfillment; religion as a source of emotional well-being; ideals and morality; religion as a part of tradition; and tendency to meet social expectations regarding religion. The questionnaire scales show excellent reliability.

Religious motivation is, besides religious belief, a domain of religiousness which has been most extensively investigated (Schaefer & Gorsuch, 1991).The most frequently used instrument for the assessment of religious motivation is Religious Orientation Scales, developed by Allport and Ross (1967).The scales are based on Allport's conceptualization of two religious orientations: extrinsic and intrinsic (Allport, 1966).An extrinsically-oriented person tends to use religion as a means of satisfying various needs, among which are needs for security, solace, sociability, social status and self-justification.By contrast, an intrinsically-oriented person considers religion as an ultimate end in itself; religion is a master motivation of her life.
According to numerous authors, the scales of extrinsic and intrinsic orientation constructed by Allport and Ross do not adequately capture the Corresponding author: irenas@fasper.bg.ac.rs constructs they are supposed to measure (e. g.Batson, Schoenrade, & Ventis, 1993;Spilka, Hood, Hunsberger, & Gorsuch, 2003).In addition, an important question is whether the structure of religious motivation may be explained by two dimensions.Kirkpatrick (1989) showed, using factor analysis, that items of the extrinsic religious orientation scale yield two factors: an extrinsic-social factor involving the use of religion as a means towards social gain; and an extrinsic-personal factor involving the use of religion as a means towards gaining positive emotional experiences, such as calmity, comfort and joy.This finding was confirmed by other researchers in independent studies (e. g.Gorsuch & McPherson, 1989).
Gorsuch et al. (Gorsuch, Mylvaganam, Gorsuch, & Johnson, 1997) took a further step in the investigation of possible types of religious motivation.They assumed that there are multiple religious motivations and that they are universal; i. e. present among persons from different cultural and religious traditions.With the aim of establishing possible religious motivations, Gorsuch et al. asked students of different cultural-religious background to generate items that might reflect their perceived religious motivations.Based on obtained data, the authors constructed scales pertaining to the following five religious motivations (in addition to the scales developed by Allport and Ross): possibility that religion will provide personal growth; provide meaning for life; provide security; motivation to support religion as a source of personal morality; and to support religion to meet the need for a society to have a common religious base for morality.According to our knowledge, the scales developed by Gorsuch et al. were not further used by the authors or other researchers.
The Religious Orientation Scales were developed by Allport and Ross on a sample of adult persons.Gorsuch and Venable (1983) adapted the scales for the use in children (fifth grade and above) by making as many language simplifications as possible without changing the meaning of the original items.However, the possibility that children and adolescents might have different types of religious motivation from adults was neglected in this work.This suggests that the development of religious motivation has been inadequately theoretically treated in research.To summarize, Allport's (Allport, 1966) conceptualization of intrinsic and extrinsic religious orientations has provided the dominant theoretical and measurement paradigm for research on religious motivation.The possibility that there are types of religious motivations, especially in children and adolescents, which are not encompassed by Allport's theoretical framework, has been largely neglected in previous research.
This study is part of a broader research of different domains of religiosity in adolescents and young adults.The aim of this study is to investigate the types of religious motivation in adolescents and young adults, and to construct a questionnaire for the assessment of religious motivation.In the first phase of the research we used interviews to investigate types of religious motivations.The construction of a questionnaire occurred during the second phase of the research.

Method
Sample.In the first phase of research, the interview data were obtained from 111 respondents (57 female, 54 male) aged 10-25 from Belgrade.The convenience sampling was used, with the aim of obtaining insight into the various ways in which adolescents and young adults relate to religion.The sample included respondents (n = 98) who attended primary schools -"Ivan Goran Kovačić" and "Petar Petrović Njegoš", and secondary schools -"Saint Sava" and "Aviation Technical School".The smaller number of respondents included persons whom we contacted through religious institutions -"Saint Marco's Church" (n = 5), "Islamic Community of Serbia" (n = 5) and "Church of Christ the King" (n = 3) -in which the respondents attended religious education or participated actively in the work of these institutions in other ways.Among respondents aged 19-25, 12 were university students and eight were employed at the time when interviews were conducted.In this phase of the research, the sample size was not determined in advance, but the principle of saturation was employed.The saturation principle, which is used in research with flexible design, means that the inclusion of additional participants can be terminated when the collection of new data does not bring any further information concerning the issue under investigation (Robson, 2002).
In the second phase of research, data for a religious motivation questionnaire construction were obtained on a sample of 354 secondary school and university students aged 15-22 from Belgrade.
Instruments.Interview.In the first phase of the research a semi-structured interview was used which was constructed for the purposes of the broader research, of which this study is a part.Some of the interview questions pertained to religious motivation.Interview questions concerning religious motivation answered by all the interview respondents were as follows: a) do they engage in religious practice (for example prayer, going to church/ mosque, celebration of religious holidays); and b) is religion important for them.The respondents who reported that they engage in religious practice were asked c) what are the reasons for their engagement; and those who expressed that religion is important to them were asked d) why it is important to them.
Interviews were conducted individually, in schools or religious institutions, after obtaining informed consent from the relevant authorities and respondents.Interviews were audio recorded and transcribed in full.The interview data were analysed using a qualitative method.The transcribed answers were independently analyzed by each author in the following way: first, text passages pertaining to the religious motivation were identified; next, categories of religious motivation were generated.Subsequently, the defined categories were discussed by the authors until agreement was reached.Disagreements were resolved by returning to transcripts.
Religious Motivation Questionnaire.The interview data were the basis for the development of the Religious Motivation Questionnaire.The questinnaire and its construction are described in detail in the Results section.

Findings Based on Interview Data
Reasons for engagement in religious practice.The responses to the question why respondents engage in religious practice may be classified into two groups: responses in which it is expressed that the reasons for engagement in religious practice are not related to religion, and responses suggesting that religious practice has a meaning emanating from religion.
To the first group of responses, in which it is expressed that persons engage in religious practice for reasons not related directly to religion, belong the following categories of responses: -Responses in which respondents state that they engage in religious practice because they "ought to", because it is a custom, "everybody does it" or because their families expect it; -Responses in which it is expressed that practicing religion has a meaning of joyful events because of customs or because of gatherings of family and friends.
In the second group of responses, in which it is stated that respondents perform religious practice for reasons related to religion, religious practice has the following meanings: -It contributes to the well-being and development of the person; -It gives the sense of closeness to God; -It is a way of expressing awe toward God.
Why is religion important.Responses to the questions whether religion is important to a person, and if yes, why it is important, were classified into the following eight categories: -Religion is not important to a person; -Religion is important, but a person does not know, or does not think about, why religion is important to him/her; -Religion is important as a means of making wishes come true: respondents state that when they pray to God their wishes are fulfilled and that is why religion is important to them (e.g. "Is your belief in God important to you?", "Yes, it is very important to me, I have greater hope that something will come true, I think -maybe God will help me"; -Religion is important as a source of emotional support: respondents express that religion is a source of emotional support for them, especially in hard moments, providing them with strength, reliance, comfort and hope; -Religion is important because it provides life's meaning, showing that it is eternal, as in the following answer: "If I would not believe, I would not have anything to hope for, I would be watching me as I live, and then I would die, and I would not exist anymore.But, I hope that there will be something, that the life will go on, despite we are all mortal.";-Religion is important because it gives directions for the development of a person and for moral conduct; for example, "Through religion, I came to know what honesty means, what lying, respect, theft mean.Because of religion, you know what each sin that you commit in life means.";-Religion is important as a part of tradition: some respondents express that religion is important to them because it is a part of their national or their family's tradition; -Religion is an ultimate value for a person: according to the answers of some respondents, religion is important to them in itself, it is of the utmost importance to them, and not only in the service of their particular motives; for example, "Religion is present in everything I do, when I write a poem, go for a walk with friends.It permeates my whole being.","Religion is what keeps me alive".Some of the above represented categories of respondents' answers to the questions why religion is important to them and why they engage in religious practice, suggest that there might be types of religious motivation which are not captured by Allport's (1966) and Gorsuch's et al. (1997) conceptualizations.These are the following categories: answers in which it is stated that a person experiences religion as a means of wish-fulfillment; expressions of the importance of religion as a part of cultural tradition; and statements that persons engage in religious practice in order to conform to the behaviour of the majority, and to meet expectations of important persons.

Construction of the Religious Motivation Questionnaire
Based on the review of the literature on the various types of religious motivation, and also on the interview data obtained in the first phase of this study, we formulated 43 statements expressing religious motivation.
Forty students of special education and rehabilitation were asked to go over the statements, to mark those that were unclear to them, and to write down statements that better expressed their own religious motivation.Based on the obtained data, 38 statements were selected for the following phases of questionnaire construction and five were eliminated.
The inital version of the questionnaire, consisting of 38 selected statements, was administered to a sample of 354 secondary school and university students aged 15-22 from Belgrade.Participants rated on a 5-point scale (not at all, mostly not, yes and no, mostly yes, completely yes) the degree to which each statement reflects their religious motivation.
The items were subjected to principal component analysis (PCA) after it was established that the Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin measure of sampling adequacy for the items was .97,and Bartlett's test of sphericity was statistically significant (χ² = 39 710,020; df=703; p<.001).
PCA using direct oblimin rotation revealed the presence of six components (based on the Kaiser-Guttman rule and Cattell's scree test) accounting together for 77.6% of the total variance.The selection of items to be kept in the following phases of questionnaire construction was based on: items' component loadings -we kept those items which showed the largest differences in loadings on particular components (high loadings on one component and low loadings on other components); and on checking the reliability of the components.Thus, 26 items were selected for the final version of the religious motivation questionnaire.The Religious Motivation Questonnaire in Serbian is given in Appendix A.
In order to examine the structure of the final version of the Religious Motivation Questionnaire we performed another PCA of the selected items using direct oblimin rotation (after establishing that the Keiser-Meyer-Olkin measure of sample adequacy was .95 and that Bartlett's test of sphericity is statistically significant, χ²=25411,477, df = 325, p<.001).PCA yielded five components (based on the Kaiser-Guttman rule and Cattell's scree test) together explaining 76.7% of the total variance.Eigenvalues and percentage of explained variance for the components are presented in Based on the content of the items which show high loadings on particular components, we concluded that the first component represents religious motivation in which religion is present overall in a person's life and is of utmost importance for her.We labelled this dimension religion as an ultimate value (UV).Items with high loadings on the second component refer to the acceptance of religion and its customs in order to meet the expections of important persons, especially of one's family.We labelled this dimension tendency to meet social expections regarding religion (SE).The items with high loadings on the third component refer to religious commitment as a means of achieving desirable goals and we named this dimension religion as a means of wish-fulfillment (WF).The fourth component was labelled religion as a part of cultural tradition (T) according to the items which refer to the importance of religion as a link between a person and her ancestors, family and national tradition.The fifth component is the most heterogeneous.It includes the items referring to the experience of religion as a source of emotional support (of calmity, hope and comfort), a source of ideals and moral guides for a person, and was accordingly named religion as a source of emotional well-being, ideals and morality (EIM).Component loadings of items after rotation, item difficulty indices (proportions of subjects who selected response options: agree strongly or agree somewhat), and item discrimination indices (corrected point biserial correlations between items and scales they belong in), are presented in Table 2.The items have adequate difficulty indices (range between .21 and .76.), and moderate to high discrimination indices (range between .59 and .92).Legend: UV -Religion as an ultimate value, SE -Tendency to meet social expectations regarding religion, WF -Religion as a means of wish-fulfillment, T -Religion as a part of tradition, EIM -Religion as a source of emotional wellbeing, ideals and morality; p -item difficulty; DI -item discrimination index Intercorrelations of components and scales developed based on principal component analysis are presented in Table 3.The Religious Motivation scales show excellent reliability according to Cronbach's α coefficient, Guttman's split-half coefficient and item intercorrelation (Table 4).
As the intercorrelations between components of religious motivation are moderate and high (Table 3), we performed second-order PCA with direct oblimin rotation to investigate whether the components form a more simple higher order structure.The analysis revealed two second-order components (based on the Kaiser-Guttman rule and Cattell's scree test) which together explain 71.1% of the total variance.Cattell's scree plot and unrotated component loadings for second-order component analysis are given in Appendix C. The pattern matrix presented in Table 5 gives an insight into the second-order component structure.The first second-order religious motivation component refers to religious comittment based on the experience of religion as serving various motivations (for emotional well-being, guidance, connection with tradition and wishfulfillment), and as being an ultimate value for a person.The second secondorder component represents religious commitment in order to meet others' expectations and, to a lesser degree, the commitment to religion as a means of wish-fulfillment.There is a moderate positive correlation between second-order components of religious motivation, r = .36.

DISCUSSION
The answers obtained in the interview part of this study, to the questions why persons engage in religious practice and why religion is important to them, suggested that there might be types of religious motivation which are not encompassed by the Religious Orientation Scales developed by Allport and Ross (Allport & Ross, 1967).These are the answers which express that religion is important to a person as a means of wish-fulfillment and as a part of cultural tradition, and the answers that persons are committed to religious practice because of the expectations of their families and broader social groups.
Importance of religion as a means of wish-fulfillment is frequent among interview respondents from our sample.According to Allport (1974), wishfulfilling religion is characteristic for childhood.The majority of the respondents who expressed this type of religious motivation in our study were 14 years of age and younger.It seems somewhat unexpected that this type of religious motivation is still present during adolescence.However, Allport (ibid.)remarks that religion is a region of personality with the most residues of childhood among adults.The explanation for this is that, for many persons, wish-fulfilling religion is permanently satisfactory and they do not feel a need to change in respect to religion.Next, the attitude of others is usually that religion is a personal sphere and social surrounding does not exert strong influence on religious development.The explanations provided by Allport refer to American society in which religion is much more pronounced than in Serbia.For example, Lippman and Keith (Lippman & Keith, 2006) report World Values Survey data from year 2000 which show that, in the USA, 93% of persons aged 18-19 belive in God, and 47 % report that religions is very important in their lives.However, in Serbia 83% believe in God and 28% state that religion is very important in their lives.Next, the percentage of 14-year olds who are members of religious organizations is 40% for the USA and 25% for the majority of other countries (no data are reported for Serbia) (ibid.).Based on these data, and because religion in our society was marginalized during the period of communist regime, we may assume that society exerts influence on religious development in Serbia to a lesser degree than in USA.This may explain why, even in adolescence for some persons from our sample, religious motivation is based on the experience of religion as a means of wish-fulfillment.The forced discontinuation of religious tradition during communism may have also contributed to the importance of religion as a part of cultural tradition.Interview respondents reported frequently that religious practice serves their social motivations: to conform to the behaviour of the majority and to meet the expectations of important others.
We considered that the types of religious motivation, suggested by the above-mentioned answers, but not included in Religious Orientation Scales (Allport & Ross, 1967), should not be neglected.For that reason, we have undertaken the construction of a religious motivation questionnaire.
Based on the interview participants' answers to the questions of why religion is important to them and why they engage in religious practice, we formulated the initial pool of items for the Religious Motivation Questionnaire.PCA of the final version of the questionnaire yielded five dimensions of religious motivation: religion as an ultimate value; a tendency to meet social expectations regarding religion; religion as a means of wish-fulfillment; religion as a part of cultural tradition; and religion as a source of emotional well-being, ideals and morality.
Comparing dimensions defined in our study to those developed by Allport and Ross (1967) and by Gorsuch et al. (1997), it may be observed that we have established three dimensions which, according to their content, do not match any of the dimensions of religious motivation contained in the previous instruments.These dimensions are: religion as a means of wish-fulfillment; religion as a part of cultural tradition; and a tendency to meet social expectations regarding religion.As mentioned earlier, Allport, when speaking about the religion of children, describes it as magical and wish-fulfilling.He also notes that children engage initially in religious practice because of parental expectation.The reason why these dimensions are not included in Religious Orientation Scales (Allport & Ross, 1967) is probably that the scales were developed for the use in adults in whom these dimensions are not very pronounced.Contrary to that, the dimension of religion as a source of emotional well-being, ideals and morality, according to its content, corresponds partly to the dimension of extrinsic-personal orientation defined by Kirkpatrick (1989) as a part of the extrinsic scale, and partly to the scales of the importance of religion for personal growth and morality by Gorsuch et al. (1997).The dimension of religion as an ultimate value, developed in our research, according to its item content corresponds to Allport's theoretical description of intrinsic religious motivation.
The scales of religious motivation constructed in this study show positive interrcorelations.This is in accordance with the findings of Gorsuch et al. (1997), who also report positive associations between different types of religious motivation.In contrast, the research generally shows no correlation, or low negative correlation, between extrinsic and intrinsic scales developed by Allport and Ross (for a review, see Donahue, 1985).Gorsuch et al. (ibid.)suggest that measures of extrinsic and intrinsic religious orientation might be unrelated to each other because the items which form these scales stress the primary motivation for being religious (e. g. "what religion offers me most").Findings of the study by Gorsuch et al. (ibid.)and our findings show that religion of the majority of persons does not rest on one or on a small number of motivations (which would result in no correlation or negative correlation between different types of religious motivation), but is based on multiple motivations.
PCA revealed two second-order components of religious motivation based on the scales developed in this study.The first component refers to religion as a means of wish-fulfillment and to the tendency to meet social expectations regarding religion.The second component refers to religion as a source of emotional well-being, ideals and morality, to religion as a part of religious tradition and to religion as an ultimate value.Thus, there are two broader dimensions of religious motivation.The first pertains to religion as a means of obtaining external gains: acceptance and approval by social surroundings and fulfillment of concrete wishes.The second broad dimension pertains to religious motivation based on experiencing religion as contributing to psychological well-being and personal development.However, these broad dimensions may not be regarded as independent as suggested by moderate positive correlation between them.
Given the positive correlations between the scales of the Religious Motivation Questionnaire and between the second-order components of religious motivation, we may conclude that religious motivation consists of mutually connected dimensions.Thus, we suggest that it may be approriate to use both the general religious motivation score and the scores on the particular questionnaire scales in future research.The choice should be made depending on research aim and scope.
The questionnaire was constructed on a sample of persons aged 15 to 22. Given that psychological development is characterized by differentiation, it may be hypothesized that the strength of the associations between different dimensions of religious motivation changes with age.Mirić (2000) pointed out that in the cognitive domain the development of moral reasoning lags behind the development of logico-mathematical reasoning.Similarly, we may expect that development in motivational sphere proceeds after adolescence and young adulthood and that different dimensions of religious motivation may become less interconnected at later age.Future research should test this assumption by examining the structure of religious motivation among older adults.
The Religious Motivation Qustionnaire constructed in this study show excellent reliability.Further research should examine correlation between this questionnaire and Religious Orientation Scales developed by Allport and Ross (1967).The construct validity of the Religious Motivation Questionnaire may be established through checking whether persons with high religious committment (for example, monks) obtain higher scores compared to other persons.Future studies should investigate whether the Religious Motivation Questionnaire contributes to predictions of personality functioning in non-religious domains when added to measures of religious belief and practice.

CONCLUSION
The interview study with adolescents and young adults suggested the presence of types of religious motivation which were not contained in the previously existing instruments and theortical considerations (Allport & Ross, 1967;Gorsuch et al., 1997).Based on interview data, a new religious motivation questionnaire was constructed.The questionnaire consists of the following subscales: religion as an ultimate value; tendency to meet social expectations regarding religion; religion as a means of wish-fulfillment; religion as a part of cultural tradition; religion as a source of emotional well-being, ideals and morality.The results of principal componet analysis suggest that religious motivation dimensions are mutually associated in a degree that both a general measure of religious motivation and measures of particular dimensions of religious motivation may be used in research.The Religious Motivation Questionnaire has been developed on a sample of persons in middle adolescence and young adulthood.Future studies should investigate whether it is suitable for use among younger persons.Further, the structure of religious motivation at younger and older ages should be examined.

Table 1 .
Cattell's scree plot of component eigenvalues and unrotated component loadings are given in Appendix B.

Table 1 .
Componets of Religious Motivation: Eigenvalues and percentage of variance explained

Table 2 .
Pattern Matrix Coefficients derived from direct Oblimin Rotation of Religious Motivation Questionnaire items Note: The highest loadings for each item are bolded

Table 3 .
Religious Motivation Component and scale intercorrelations Legend: **p<.01Note:Componentcorrelations are non-bolded, scale correlations are bolded Reliability indicators of Religious Motivation scales are presented in Table4.

Table 4 .
Religious Motivation Questionnaire reliability indicators

Table 5 .
Pattern Matrix Coefficients derived from Direct Oblimin Rotation of Religious Motivation Questionnaire scales