Construction of a Religious Identity Status Questionnaire

This study presents a construction and psychometric evaluation of the Religious Identity Status Questionnaire – RISQ for the assessment of the religious identity status according to Marcia’s ego identity status approach. The initial item pool was generated based on Erikson’s theory of psychosocial development, Marcia’s ego identity status approach and interviews with adolescents and young adults. A factor analysis of the initial item pool was performed on data obtained from a sample of 394 secondary school and university students from Serbia to select items for the questionnaire. Validity of the questionnaire was examined on a sample of 1155 subjects. The results of the CFA suggest that subscales of the RISQ measure four factors corresponding to the identity statuses of Marcia's model. Correlations with ideological identity subscales of the EOM–EIS–2 suggest the convergent validity of the questionnaire. Configural measurement invariance was established for gender and denominational groups. Metric invariance was established for gender and among orthodox and catholic participants, whereas scalar invariance was established for gender, but not for denominational groups.


Faculty of Special Education and Rehabilitation, University of Belgrade, Serbia
This study presents a construction and psychometric evaluation of the Religious Identity Status Questionnaire -RISQ for the assessment of the religious identity status according to Marcia's ego identity status approach. The initial item pool was generated based on Erikson's theory of psychosocial development, Marcia's ego identity status approach and interviews with adolescents and young adults. A factor analysis of the initial item pool was performed on data obtained from a sample of 394 secondary school and university students from Serbia to select items for the questionnaire. Validity of the questionnaire was examined on a sample of 1155 subjects. The results of the CFA suggest that subscales of the RISQ measure four factors corresponding to the identity statuses of Marcia's model. Correlations with ideological identity subscales of the EOM-EIS-2 suggest the convergent validity of the questionnaire. Configural measurement invariance was established for gender and denominational groups. Metric invariance was established for gender and among orthodox and catholic participants, whereas scalar invariance was established for gender, but not for denominational groups.
Key words: religious identity status, Religious Identity Status Questionnaire, RISQ, Marcia's ego identity status approach Highlights:  The RISQ is based on Marcia's ego identity status model. and allows the assessment of religious ego identity status.
 Results support construct and convergent validity of the RISQ.
 Gender groups show full scalar invariance, while only configural invariance is supported for denominational groups.
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Construction of a Religious Identity Status Questionnaire
Religion is present in all human societies. It has a multitude of aspects and roles, as can be seen in the following definition -Religion is: (a) an evolved system of thought, feeling, and actions directed towards an object of devotion; (b) a code of ethics governing personal and social conduct; (c) a frame of reference relating individuals to their group and the universe (Hay, Reich, & Utsch, 2006). An individual's religiosity changes during their life span. Numerous theories of religious development provide an account of this phenomenon from different perspectives. One prominent perception is that of religious identity development, which is grounded in Erikson's theory of identity formation (Erikson, 1950(Erikson, , 1968). Erikson (1956) introduced the concept of identity into the field of psychology.

Erikson's Theory of Identity Formation
For Erikson, the notion of identity contains various aspects. It can be conceived as: a) a conscious sense of personal identity; an unconscious tendency towards continuity of personal character; b) a process of ego synthesis; or maintenance of inner solidarity with the identity and ideals of a group (Erikson, 1959). One's sense of inner identity encompasses "a progressive continuity between that which he has come to be during the long years of childhood and that which he promises to become in the anticipated future; between that which he conceives himself to be and that which he perceives others to see in him and to expect of him" (Erikson, 1971, p. 87).
Erikson's conceptualization of identity and identity formation is embedded in his theory of personality development. According to his theory, personality develops across the life span through eight stages. Each stage is characterized by a key psychosocial task, or crisis, that requires resolution. The outcome of each crisis lays in a continuum between a negative and a positive pole.
Identity formation is the positive pole, and role confusion is the negative pole of the crisis, which Erikson ascribes to the age of adolescence and young adulthood (Erikson, 1971). Identity formation reaches its crisis during adolescence but is not restricted to that period. Rather, identity formation begins in childhood and continues its developmental course throughout the life cycle. Developmental stages contribute to the preceding identity crisis either by supporting the formation of identity or by leading to its confusion (Erikson, 1971). Conversely, as Erikson states, "identity is never 'established' as an 'achievement' in the form of a personality armor, or of anything static and unchangeable" (Erikson, 1971, p. 24). Some forms of identity crisis may reoccur in later stages of the life cycle due to an individual's biological or psychological changes, or deviations in their social context (Kroger, 2007).

Marcia's Ego Identity Status Approach to Ego Identity
Building on Erikson's theory of identity formation, and on interviews with college students on their identity development, Marcia (1966) proposes an identity status approach to identity development. Identity statuses are modes of resolving identity issues. Marcia establishes four identity statuses, which are defined by their position along two dimensions: exploration (or crisis) and commitment (Marcia, 1993).
Exploration refers to a process of struggling or active questioning in arriving at decisions pertaining to identity issues; namely, goals, values and beliefs. The indicators of exploration are: non-superficial knowledge of alternatives concerning an identity issue; activity directed towards information gathering in terms of alternatives under consideration (for example, reading, taking courses, discussing with knowledgeable persons); evidence that alternative potential identity elements have been considered; heightened emotional tone; and a desire to make a decision in the near future. Three positions regarding exploration are: past crisis, in crisis, and absence of crisis.
Commitment designates making a choice about identity issues and engaging in activities congruent with the choice. A committed person dedicates effort and time to a certain goal, value, or belief, and she is not motivated (currently) to reconsider her choice. According to Waterman (1993a) operational criteria for commitment comprise the following: accurate knowledge of a chosen identity element; activity directed toward implementing of that element; emotional tone of confidence, stability, optimism, and enthusiasm regarding obtaining the chosen goals; identifications with significant persons from which commitment originates in some people; projection of one's personal future; and resistance to being swayed.
The identity statuses defined by Marcia (Marcia, 1966(Marcia, , 1993 are as follows: Identity Diffusion, Foreclosure, Moratorium, and Identity Achievement. The labels for identity statuses were taken from Erikson's writings, but Marcia assigns them somewhat different meanings in accordance with his conceptualization of identity statuses. Identity Diffusion is characterized by a lack of present identity defining commitments, with or without prior periods of exploration. Foreclosure denotes commitment acquired with no previous exploration, but through identification with parents and other significant persons. Moratorium is a status of active cognitive and behavioral exploration of an identity issue, with the aim to define goals, beliefs or values to which a person may become committed. Identity Achievement refers to the status of commitment attained as the result of exploration and consideration of alternatives regarding identity issues. With respect to developmental trends, Marcia's model assumes no universal sequence of identity statuses. According to Waterman (1993b), people enter adolescence most likely in the status of foreclosure or diffusion, and changes are possible in theory from each of the statuses to any of the others. The only exceptions are movement from the Moratorium and the Identity Achievement statuses into the Foreclosure status. This is because Foreclosure excludes prior exploration, by which both Moratorium and Identity Achievement are defined. Meta-analyses of longitudinal studies covering adolescence and adulthood suggest the following developmental order: 1) Diffusion, 2) Moratorium, 3) Foreclosure, 4) Achievement, with evidence of progressive and regressive developmental trends and stability of identity statuses (Kroger, Martinussen, & Marcia, 2010;Meeus, 2011 (Marcia, 1966;Marcia et al., 1993). The interview targets identity formation in the following core domains: vocational choice, religious beliefs, political ideology, gender-role attitudes, and beliefs about sexual expression (Waterman, 1993a). Further, a questionnaire measure of identity statuses, The Objective Measure of Ego Identity Status (the OMEIS), has been created and revised in several studies (Adams, Shea, & Fitch, 1979;Grotevant & Adams, 1984;Bennion & Adams, 1986). In its final form - The Extended Objective Measure of Ego Identity Status (the EOM-EIS-2, Bennion & Adams, 1986)the questionnaire assesses the status of global, ideological, and interpersonal identity. Ideological identity encompasses domains of religion, occupation, politics, and philosophical life-style, and interpersonal identity pertains to sex roles, friendship, recreation, and dating. The questionnaire consists of four subscales referring to particular ego identity statuses. That is, the subscale of identity diffusion reflects absence of commitment with no exploration, the subscale of moratorium reflects exploration without already formed commitment, the foreclosure subscale reflects commitment without prior exploration, and the achievement subscale reflects commitment based on previous exploration.

Religion, Religious Identity, and Religious Identity Status
Religion is a significant part of all cultures (Spilka, Hood, Hunsberger, & Gorsuch, 2003). Although there are intercultural differences, at least some people worldwide report that religion is personally important to them, with the number being very high in some countries (e.g., USA, Brazil, Indonesia) (Lippman & Keith, 2006). Hansen, Larson, and Dworkin (2003) suggest that faith-based activities are an important area for adolescents' personal and interpersonal development. Regarding identity development, adolescents from their sample reported that faith-based activities provided more opportunities for exploration and identity reflection, compared with other types of activities (academic and leadership, performance and fine arts, and sports). Sharp et al. (2007) found that while religion was endorsed as a self-defining activity (activity that a person identifies as being important to who he/she is) by a relatively small number of adolescents, adolescents reported that religious activities, along with creative, prosocial and social activities, provided the highest levels of personal expressiveness, as an experience relevant to identity development. The authors suggest that religious activities may be vital to developing a sense of identity.
Several studies have investigated religious identity status in line with the Marcia's model. Researchers have either employed the interview method (Fadjukoff, Pulkinen, & Kokko, 2005Pastorino et al., 1997, Rogow, Marcia, & Slugoski, 1983 or have used items from the OMEIS pertaining to religion (Hardy et al., 2010;Lee, Miller, & Chang, 2006;Solomontos-Kountouri & Hurry, 2008). The latter method entails a problem of reliability because only two items per identity status refer to religion (likewise for other identity domains). Lee, Miller, and Chang (2006) report Cronbach's alphas ranging from .17 to .80, while other studies report no data on reliability of religious status scales. (1990)  During the last decades, Marcia's model has been extended in newly developed models that include the more differentiated dimensions of commitment and exploration.

Dellas and Jernigan
In Luyckx and colleagues' dual-cycle model (Luyckx, Goossens, & Soenens, 2006), identity formation is viewed as a commitment-evaluation cycle comprising four processes: exploration in breadth, commitment making, exploration in depth and identification with commitment. Later, a dimension of ruminative exploration has been added to the model (Luyckx et al. 2008). Rydz and Wieradzka-Pilarczyk (2017) developed the scale measuring the dimensions of this model in the religious domain.
Another recent model which extends the Marcia's model is the three-factor model developed by Crocetti, Rubini, and Meeus (2008). According to the model, identity development comprises three processes: commitment, in-depth exploration, and reconsideration of commitment. A questionnaire has also been developed to measure these three dimensions, the Utrecht Management of Identity Commitments scale (U-MICS) (Crocetti, Rubini, & Meeus, 2008). UMICS may be applied to religion as well as to other domains of identity.
In summary, domain-specific identity assessment is advocated in the literature.
Questionnaire measures of religious identity status according to Marcia's model used in previous research have limitations in terms of reliability, while the DISI-R does not provide continuous scores of identity statuses. Instruments which are based on Luyckx and colleagues ' (2006, 2008) and Crocetti and colleagues' (2008) models contain items which refer to commitment and exploration in the present time, thus omitting information on the processes a person was going through in the past, which is important according to Erikson's and Marcia's model. Furthermore, the relevance of distinguishing between different types of exploration and between commitment making and identification with commitment has still not been enough theoretically and empirically supported. For these reasons, and because Marcia's model has been most widely used in the field of identity formation, we aimed to develop an instrument of religious identity statuses according to Marcia's model. This may enable incorporating research on religious identity development within the broad empirical field of identity development based on that model. We assume that exploring religious identity development from various theoretical frameworks may be beneficial to this relatively understudied area of study.
The present study aims to construct a questionnaire for the assessment of the identity status in the domain of religion, which is analogous to the OMEIS in terms of the postulated status, questionnaire format, and scoring procedures. This could widen the possibilities to relate the study of religious identity status to the broad field of research based on the use of the OMEIS.
The study proceeded in three phases. During the first phase, an initial item pool was generated based on the following: the theoretical considerations of Erikson's theory of identity development and Marcia's identity status model; the content of the items of the EOM-EIS-2 pertaining to religion; interview responses regarding religious identity development obtained in our previous study (Stojković, 2017). In that study, participants responded to open-ended questions about whether their religiousness changed over time and in what ways, who and what influenced their religious development, the importance of religion in their lives. For the purposes of the present study, we looked for expressions in the interviews which referred to characteristics of ego identity statuses according to Erikson's theory and Marcia's model. During the second phase, factor analysis was performed to select the items to be retained in the questionnaire. In the third phase, the questionnaire's construct validity was examined using the confirmatory factor analysis. Moreover, correlations of the questionnaire with the EOM-EIS-2 (Bennion & Adams, 1986) were analyzed for the purpose of convergent validation.

Sample
During the first phase of the study, a group of 40 students of special education and rehabilitation (33 females, 7 males) reviewed the initial pool of items. The age of students was 20-24 years.
For the second phase of the study, data for the factor analysis were obtained from a sample of 394 secondary school and faculty students (205 females, 189 males), age range 15.08-24.53 years, Mage = 19.43 years, SD = 2.49.
During the study's third phase, data for the construct validation of the questionnaire were obtained from 1155 persons (646 females, 509 males) aged 12.58 to 24.92 years, Mage = 16.77 years, SD = 3.08) in three cities in Serbia: Subotica, Belgrade, and Novi Pazar. The sample included upper elementary school grades, secondary school, and university students. The structure of the sample by religious selfcategorization is presented in Table 1.

Procedure
During the first phase of the study, a group of 40 undergraduate students checked the initial pool of items during a class. We asked them to indicate whether they found some items to be unclear, or identical in meaning with some other items. They were also asked to add items that would better reflect their own experience.
Data for the second and the third phases of the study were collected in school and faculty settings, with the permission of the institutions' authorities. Informed consent was obtained from the participants prior to data collection. Participation was voluntary and all subjects who were asked to participate agreed. Questionnaires were group administered during breaks or lessons.
The procedure for obtaining the consent for participation differed for participants who were university students and for students who were attending primary or secondary school. University students were informed on the topic and the aim of the study and asked to sign a written consent for the participation, before filling in the questionnaires. For the students of elementary and secondary schools, among whom majority is under age, we asked teachers to inform parents of the students at parental meetings about the topic of the research and to ask them to sign written consent for their children to participate. From the parents who were not present at the meeting, the consent was obtained at some later convenient time, before data collection. The parents were told by teachers that they can contact researchers if they needed additional information before signing the consent. Students from elementary and secondary schools also signed themselves the consent to participate.

Instruments
The Religious Identity Status Questionnaire (RISQ). The RISQ constructed in this study consists of four subscales pertaining to the following religious ego identity statuses: Diffusion (4 items), Foreclosure (4 items), Moratorium (5 items), and Achievement (5 items). Participants are asked to indicate the degree to which each item reflects them and their situation by choosing one answer on a 5-point Likert scale (1absolutely no; 2mostly no; 3neither no nor yes; 4mostly yes; 5absolutely yes).
Following recommendations by Adams (1998) for the EOM-EIS-2, respondents are encouraged to respond to the total item rather than a particular part. Ratings of items pertaining to a specific identity status are summed and divided by the number of items to obtain a respondents' score for that identity status. Further characteristics of the questionnaire are presented in the results section.
The original questionnaire is in the Serbian language (see Appendix 2). The English version presented in the paper was constructed using back-translation. First, one of the authors, a Serbian native speaker, translated the items into English. The items were then proofread by an English native speaker and, subsequently, translated into Serbian. The other author of the paper compared the original and the back-translated version, and confirmed their equivalence.

The Extended Objective Measure of Ego Identity Status 2(EOM-EIS-2,
Bennion & Adams, 1986). The 64-item questionnaire assesses ideological and interpersonal identity status. It includes 8 subscales; four for each of the two identities, reflecting the identity statuses according to Marcia's model: Diffusion, Foreclosure, Moratorium, and Achievement. Items belonging to the ideological domain pertain to occupation, politics, religion, and philosophical life style; whereas interpersonal items pertain to sex roles, friendship, recreation and dating. Each item is rated using a 6-point Likert scale ranging from 1 (strongly agree) to 6 (strongly disagree). The Cronbach's alpha reliability coefficients of the diffused, foreclosed, moratorium, and achieved identity subscales in the present sample were . 51, .74, .64, and .73, for ideological, and .63, .85, .63, and .69 for interpersonal identity, respectively. Cronbach's alpha reliability coefficients for items related to religion were .64 for Diffusion, .63 for Foreclosure, .67 for Moratorium, and .67 for Achievement.

Results
Data were analyzed using the IBM SPSS Statistics 23.0 software package.

Factor Analysis
The initial item pool contained 61 items. After elimination of unclear or superfluous items, 32 items were retained and subjected to factor analysis. Principal axis factoring was used as a method of extraction, while direct oblimin was used as a method of rotation because ego identity statuses are theoretically expected to be correlated, which has also been empirically shown (e.g., Adams, 1998 ). Principal axis factoring was used instead of principal components analysis, because of its purpose to identify the number of latent constructs, whereas purpose of principal components analysis is data reduction (Jain & Shandliya, 2013). The Kaiser-Guttman criterion (eigenvalue greater than 1), Cattell's scree test, Velicer's minimum average partial (MAP) test (Velicer, 1976), and parallel analysis (Horn, 1965) were used to determine the number of factors (O'Connor, 2000). The Kaiser-Guttman criterion and Cattell's scree test suggested that five factors accounting for 55.2% of the total variance should be retained. The original MAP test suggested five, and the revised MAP test suggested four factors (Velicer, Eaton, & Fava, 2000). Parallel analysis suggested 10 factors.
However, we decided not to take into account the results of the parallel analysis in this and in subsequent analyses, for the following reasons: the analysis yielded results which were inconsistent with the results of other analyses and with the ego identity status theory; there are suggestions that parallel analysis of principal factors may tend to overestimate the number of factors (Buja & Eyuboglu, 1992).
The content of items with high loadings on particular factors suggested that there are three factors that correspond to statuses of diffusion, moratorium, and achievement; whereas two factors contained items reflecting status of foreclosure. One of these two factors included items referring to religious commitment arising from the acceptance of one's family faith; whereas the second factor comprised items reflecting the acceptance of faith of a social community to which person belongs. For the final version of the scale, we decided to retain the items reflecting the acceptance of faith of one's social community, because these items displayed higher factor loadings in the four factor solution.
After eliminating items reflecting identity foreclosure by adoption of family faith, we again applied principal axis factoring analysis with direct oblimin rotation. Four factors were extracted based on Kaiser-Guttman criterion, Cattell's scree test, and MAP test, which explained 54.9% of the total variance. Based on the results of the analysis, we excluded those items which showed high loadings on more than one factor, or which had low loadings on the factor to which they might belong according to their content. Therefore, 18 items were retained for the final version of the questionnaire.  (Buja & Eyuboglu, 1992). The four factors explained 60.3% of the total variance. According to the content of items with high loadings on particular factors, the first factor referred to Diffusion, the second to Foreclosure, the third to Moratorium, and the fourth to Identity Achievement. Table 2 presents the item loadings, eigenvalues and percentages of the explained variance for the factors, and means, standard deviations and Cronbach's alpha reliability coefficients of the corresponding subscales.

Confirmatory Factor Analysis
A confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was employed to investigate whether the items of the RISQ form four factors corresponding to Marcia's identity statuses. The hypothesized model, which was tested, was specified in the following way: the model included four factors (latent variables) which corresponded to Marcia's identity statuses; the factors could correlate; each item was an indicator of only one latent variable, i.e., factor which it is supposed to reflect; the variance of the latent variables was fixed to the value of 1; maximum likelihood estimation was used; and missing data were handled with the usage of estimation of means and intercepts.
We Based on the standardized CFA loadings and the full correlation matrix, we calculated omega reliability coefficients (according to Dunn, Baguley, & Brunsden, 2013). to be .89, .83, .91, and .88 for Diffusion, Foreclosure, Moratorium, and Achievement, respectively.

Correlations between the RISQ and the EOM-EIS-2 Scales
Correlations between the RISQ scales and the OMEIS-2 scales of interpersonal and ideological identity are presented in Table 3.
We calculated correlations between the RISQ religious identity status scales and the average scores on the corresponding identity status items pertaining to religion of the EOM-EIS-2. The correlations are .50, .31, .17, and .66 for Diffusion, Foreclosure, Moratorium, and Achievement, respectively. All correlations are significant at the .01 level.

Multi-group Analyses
Since our sample included both male and female participants, as well as participants of different religious denominations, we were interested in determining whether the structure of the instrument is the same on subsamples defined by gender / religion. Therefore, we performed two multi-group analyses, testing the same structural model in 1) male and female samples and 2) Orthodox, Catholic, and Muslim participants.
The unconstrained gender equivalence model fit the data well (Table 4), indicating configural equivalence for the category of gender. Moreover, fixing item loadings to be the same across groups did not worsen model fit significantly (Δχ 2 (14) =14.39, p = .42) indicating metric equivalence. Scalar equivalence was demonstrated by a lack of difference in model fit between either the unconstrained (Δχ 2 (32) = 40.63, p = .14) or the fixed weights model (Δχ 2 (18) = 26.24, p = .09) and the model in which both weights and intercepts were fixed to be the same for both genders. Moreover, the fit of all models was essentially the same, further pointing to the equivalence of the proposed factor solution on male and female samples.  (Table 4). However, fixing item loadings to be the same in Orthodox, Catholic and Muslim participants significantly worsened model fit -Δχ 2 (14) = 23.72, p = .05), and so did fixing measurement intercepts as well (Δχ 2 (32) =99.61, p = .000), compared to the unconstrained model and (Δχ 2 (18) =75.90, p = .000), compared to the fixed weights model.

Evidence of metric equivalence was stronger, though, when only Orthodox and
Catholic participants were compared. The unconstrained model fit the data very well (Table 4), and fixing item loadings to be the same in both groups did not deter model fit -Δχ 2 (14) = 22.91, p = .06). Similar to findings on three groups, fixing the intercepts to be the same across groups did worsen model fit (Δχ 2 (32) = 52.65, p = .01) compared to the unconstrained model and (Δχ 2 (18) =29.74, p = .04) compared to the fixed weights model.

Discussion
Considering the importance of religion to numerous adolescents and adults, and that religious activities are an important area for identity development, the construction of the RISQ questionnaire for the assessment of the religious identity status was presented in this study. The RISQ is analogous to the OMEIS (Adams, Shea, & Fitch, 1979;Grotevant & Adams, 1984;Bennion & Adams, 1986), the most widely-used measure of identity status, in that it originates from Marcia's identity status model (Marcia, 1966). Moreover, it has the same structure, response format, and scoring procedures as the OMEIS; thereby enabling the comparison between the development of religious identity status and the development of ideological and interpersonal identity statuses.
The results of the exploratory factor analysis and CFA suggest that the subscales of the RISQ measure four factors that, according to their contents, correspond to identity statuses of the Marcia's model. The RISQ subscales demonstrate moderate correlations with corresponding scales of ideological identity status of the EOM-EIS-2, with the exception of Diffusion, for which the correlation is low. Furthermore, these correlations are higher than correlations between the RISQ scales and the corresponding scales of interpersonal identity of the EOM-EIS-2. The exception is Diffusion, which displays the same correlation with Diffusion of interpersonal and ideological identity.
We assume that this correlation pattern suggests convergent validity of the RISQ.
Cronbach's alpha and omega reliability coefficients, which ranged from .83 to .91, indicate good reliability of the RISQ identity status scales.
The full (configural, metric and scalar) measurement invariance was established for males and females. With regards to religious denomination, configural invariance was confirmed for all the three denomination groups, i.e., for Orthodox, Catholic, and Muslim participants. The results suggest metric invariance for Orthodox and Catholic participants, and scalar non-invariance between the three denominations. The metric non-invariance for Muslims compared to Orthodox and Catholic participants suggests that some items do not contribute in the same degree to measuring identity status constructs among Muslims as they do among Orthodox and Catholics, i. e. that the importance of some items as indicators of identity statuses differs for the Muslim participants compared to the other two groups. Scalar non-invariance indicates that three religious denominations differ in baseline acceptance rate of some items of the questionnaire. We assume that scalar non-invariance can be explained by interdenominational differences in the emphasis on religion in everyday life.. Thus, the results suggest that RISQ may be employed for investigating gender differences. With regard to denominational differences, our results justify the use of the RISQ for investigating differences between Orthodox and Catholic groups. Given the fact that configural invariance was obtained for the three denominational groups, we assume that further research is justified which would elucidate sources of metric non-invariance when model is applied to Muslims compared to Orthodox and Catholics. According to Putnick and Bornstein (2016), it is at present unadvisable to reject all noninvariant models because we still lack enough empirical evidence on real-life implications of noninvariance.

RELIGIOUS IDENTITY STATUS QUESTIONNAIRE
Analogously to the OMEIS, continuous and categorical measures of identity statuses may be obtained from the RISQ. Continuous measures are gained by summing scores on items pertaining to subscales of particular statuses, and dividing them by the number of items. The rationale for the use of continuous measures is the assumption that each of the statuses is present in a person to some degree, and continuous measures have been used widely in identity status research. Conversely, deriving from the Erikson's theory and the Marcia's model, it may be assumed that persons may be in different statuses of identity development, and that development consists of trajectories between statuses. Accordingly, categorizing people into different identity statuses has been used extensively in research. For categorising individuals into a religious identity status based on the RISQ, we propose using three rules formulated for the OMEIS by Adams (1998). Adams (1998) determined cutoff points for identity status subscales as one standard deviation above the subscale mean, and defined categorisation criteria based on these cutoff points. According to the pure identity status rule, a person is categorised into one identity status if her score on that subscale is at or above the cutoff point and her scores on all other subscales are below the cutoff points. The low-profile status rule is that persons with scores falling below cutoff points on all four subscales are categorised as undifferentiated or low-profile moratorium. According to transition status rule, those who score at or higher than the cutoff points on two subscales are classified into a transition status category (e.g., moratorium-achievement). Furthermore, Adams proposes that collapsing transition status persons into one of the four identity statuses may be suitable for some research and suggests categorisation into a developmentally lower of the two statuses (according to the developmental order diffusionforeclosure moratoriumachievement). Scoring at or higher than cutoff points on more than two subscales suggests the recommendation of indiscriminative responding to and excluding subjects with such scores from analyses (Adams, 1998).
Based on the means and standard deviations obtained from our sample of adolescents and young adults of various religious nominations, the cutoff points for the RISQ subscales are 4.46, 3.63, 3.32, and 4.46 for Diffusion, Foreclosure, Moratorium, and Achievement, respectively. These cutoff points and categorizations based on them may be useful for comparing various samples in terms of religious identity status.
However, when samples differ from our sample in regard to age, or social and cultural factors, and when comparisons to our sample are not in focus, we recommend determining cutoff points based on means and standard deviations obtained for a particular sample. This is due to the variability in religious identity status between various socio-cultural groups.
Crocetti and Meeus (2015) point towards the limitations of using a-priori criteria based on cutoff points for categorizing subjects into identity statuses. A-priori criteria may impose the structure which does not adequately reflect the real structure of the sample, and numerous participants may remain unclassified. The authors advocate using empirically-based methods of classifications which eliminate these problems (e. g. cluster analysis). However, they also state that empirically-based methods are sensitive to fluctuations between samples and may yield classifications that differ between samples.
We propose using cutoff points and a-priori criteria defined by Adams (1998) when using the RISQ with the aim of comparing religious identity development between different samples. Empirically-based methods of classifying participants into identity statuses may also be used on data obtained by the RISQ to explore the structure of the sample in terms of identity statuses. Therefore, the limitations of a-priori method of classification may be overcome.

Conclusion
The questionnaire constructed in the present study provides assessment of religious identity development according to Marcia's ego identity status approach. its psychometric characteristics in this study were good. The RISQ may contribute to the field of study of religious identity development.  Note. *Participants who checked the answer: "I do not believe in God or in a supernatural power, and I do not belong to any faith"; **Participants who endorsed the answer: "I think that people can not know whether God exists or not, and I do not belong to any faith".   Note. In the MAP test, the smallest average squared partial correlation is .0106, indicating four factors. In parallel analysis, eigenvalues are larger than the eigenvalues of parallel analyses for seven factors, suggesting that the number of factors is seven.