A scale was constructed for measuring the religious attitudes of students at a British University. Scores obtained from administration of the scale to a representative sample of 500 students show that there is a significant decline in religious belief among students in the Faculties of Arts and Pure Science during early years at the University, but that this decline continues only for the Science students, especially those who later engage in research. Medical students in their final years and students training for the teaching profession, especially the arts graduates, have the highest scores of all. Between denominations it was found that Catholics and members of small evangelical sects scored higher than adherents of other denominations, and between sexes the familiar finding that women tend to be more religious than men was replicated. Some implications of these findings are discussed.
21Of the scales mentioned above, (3) was the most relevant to our enquiry, but the statements in it were deliberately chosen so as to encourage outright acceptance or rejection for the purpose of obtaining two well-defined groups. Of the British scales, (6) is a composite scale containing only a few items which concern religion, and ( 5 ) was designed for use with the general population. The items which this and some of the other scales contain are rather crude. We felt that expressions of belief amongst students might well be of a more sophisticated nature, and therefore that items should be derived from amongst the student population.Our interest lay in measuring attitudes towards the Christian religion. This is not because we regard other religious beliefs as unimportant, but to have included them in our scale would have added yet another 'dimension' to a set of beliefs which we suspected were very far from being homogeneous. Statements were invited from a large number of students and also from members of the teaching staff. The first part of the article is concerned with an account of the compilation of the scale, the methodological problems which arose during this stage and the scale's administration to a representative sample of students. The findings are then presented and discussed.can be calculated for each person by scoring 2 points for each 'Strongly Agree' or ' Strongly 'Disagree', I point for each 'Agree' or ' Disagree' and o for each 'Mildly Agree' or 'Mildly Disagree'. The relationship between the E score and the subject's total score can then be shown in a scatter diagram, the lowest point of which indicates that score at which intensity of response is minimal. Such a scatter diagram was constructed and resulted in the U-shaped form which is typically found with a bi-polar variable. The zero point was located round about the score value of 85, just below the median.
The responses of 120 subjects to two parallel versions of a religious attitude scale were scored by four different methods : Thurstone scoring ; Likert scoring ; scale-product scoring ; and scoring by weighted proportions. The effect of these methods on the reliability and validity of the scale was then compared.Likert scoring and scoring by weighted proportions produced the highest reliability coefficients (o.gg), and Thurstone scoring the lowest (0.85). Scale-Product scoring resulted in a reliability coefficient of 0.88. Reasons are given for considering this method of scoring to be unsatisfactory.The validity coefficients given by each of five criteria over the four different methods of scoring were found to be quite closely comparable, but generally scoring by weighted proportions yielded the highest validity coefficients. But the simpler Likert system did almost as well.
A questionnaire investigation into university students' religious beliefs, practices and attitudes, originally carried out in 1961, was repeated in 1972 on a comparable sample of students. Eight indices of religious belief, practice or attitude were used. A substantial and statistically highly significant movement away from religion by the students was found for all indices. Sex differences in religious behaviour, highly prominent in 1961, were less marked in 1973, although five of the eight indices still showed a statistically significant sex difference. Further analysis of changes in the men's and women's responses between 1961 and 1972 led to the conclusion that the women students had declined more than the men. Findings concerning denominational differences and differences between faculties and years of study in 1961 and 1972 were also presented and discussed. It was suggested that the Religious Attitude Scale was as valid a measure of the strength of Christian belief in 1972 as it was in 1961.
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