HUMANISTIC MORALITY / LIBERAL BELIEF SCALE

Abstract

The Humanistic Morality Scale and the Liberal Belief Scale were developed by Norwegian psychiatrist Eystein Kaldestad to assess increasingly religiosity and moral views that were not adequately captured by existing English-language measures (such as the Allport-Ross and Batson’s Quest Scales) within the Norwegian context. The scales were specifically designed to measure liberal religious interpretation and permissive, relativistic morality, respectively, among a population where 92% were nominal members of the Norwegian Lutheran State Church. Both instruments are now available in English translation for international research use.

The Liberal Belief Scale and the Humanistic Morality Scale each consist of eight items, worded as positive expressions of a liberal perspective. Responses are collected using a 5-point Likert scale, ranging from 1 (“strongly disagree”) to 5 (“strongly agree”). Total scale scores are calculated by finding the mean rating across the eight items. The two scales are highly correlated (r ≈ .70), suggesting they share approximately half of their common variance, reflecting an underlying dimension of religious and moral liberalism.

Keywords

Eystein Kaldestad, Liberal Belief Scale, Humanistic Morality Scale, Religiosity, Moral Conservatism, Doctrinal Orthodoxy, Psychological Testing, Norway, Likert scale, Allport-Ross Scales.

Authors

Eystein Kaldestad, H. Stifoss-Hanssen

Purpose

The primary purpose of developing the Humanistic Morality and Liberal Belief Scales was to create a robust battery of measures suitable for assessing the relationship between religiosity, personality, and mental health among Norwegian subjects. Specifically, the scales aimed to measure the shift toward more liberal religious views and the emergence of permissive, relativistic morality observed in Norway following World War II, which traditional scales failed to capture effectively.

These two scales are intended strictly for use as research instruments, providing quantifiable measures of liberal theological interpretation and humanistic moral orientation, which can then be correlated with other psychological and behavioral variables.

Construct

The instrument measures two distinct but highly related psychological constructs associated with religious and moral liberalism:

• Liberal Belief Scale: This scale measures a liberal theological perspective, inspired by Andrew Weigert’s (1988) delineation of liberal versus fundamentalist Christian eschatology. It focuses on non-literal biblical interpretation, skepticism regarding traditional eschatological concepts (like the end of the world or the devil), and a belief in universal reconciliation.

• Humanistic Morality Scale: This scale measures a permissive and relativistic moral orientation. It emphasizes practical neighborly love over absolute religious rules (such as the Ten Commandments), the development of personal values based on life experience, and the prioritization of preventing harm over adherence to strict, religiously founded moral norms.

Validity

The validity of the scales was assessed through three primary methods: content validity, convergent validity, and factorial validity.

Content Validity: Content validity was established through expert review. Fifteen theologians were asked, on two separate occasions, to sort the randomly arranged statements into their respective scales. For the Humanistic Morality Scale items, the theologians achieved complete unanimity without error on both occasions. For the Liberal Belief Scale, six of the eight items showed similar unanimity, with the remaining two items receiving strong majority concurrence.

Convergent Validity: Convergent validity was demonstrated through correlations with established, related measures. As expected, the Liberal Belief Scale showed significant negative correlations with measures of traditional religious viewpoints: -.59 with the Doctrinal Orthodoxy Scale and -.48 with Woodrum’s Moral Conservatism Index. The Humanistic Morality Scale also showed strong negative correlations: -.58 with the Doctrinal Orthodoxy Scale and -.50 with the Moral Conservatism Index. Furthermore, the scales correlated positively with Batson’s Quest Scale (LBS: .37; HMS: .48) and showed meaningful correlations with the Allport-Ross Intrinsic and Extrinsic Scales, suggesting the Allport-Ross measures inherently capture some of the liberal/conservative dimension.

Reliability

Internal consistency reliability was calculated using Cronbach’s coefficient alpha across multiple samples of staff members and nonpsychotic psychiatric inpatients.

For the Liberal Belief Scale, internal consistency was consistently high across samples, yielding alphas of .77 (first sample) and .73 (third sample). The Humanistic Morality Scale initially showed lower reliability; the original five-item version yielded an unacceptable alpha of .34 in the first sample. However, the scale was expanded to eight items, and this revised version demonstrated satisfactory reliability in subsequent samples, yielding alphas of .72 (second sample) and .80 (third sample). These final reliability coefficients are deemed more than sufficient for rigorous research applications.

Factor Analysis

Factorial validity was examined by performing factor analysis on each scale separately, and then combining them with the Moral Conservatism Index and the Doctrinal Orthodoxy Scale.

When analyzed separately, the Liberal Belief Scale yielded two factors, accounting for 37.0% and 16.8% of the variance, respectively. The first factor, comprising items 1, 2, 4, and 5, appeared to reflect a dimension related to biblical literalism. The Humanistic Morality Scale also yielded two factors, explaining 42.5% and 14.3% of the variance. When all four scales were factor-analyzed together, the items from Kaldestad’s scales tended to scatter across four or five of the resulting seven factors. Kaldestad suggested this indicated the scales might lack sufficient homogeneity. However, as Anastasi (1988) noted, homogeneity is not necessary if the criterion being measured (such as overall religiosity or morality) is itself heterogeneous.

Instrument

Test Type: Self-report questionnaire (Psychometric Scale)

Format: Paper-and-pencil or digital administration; two separate 8-item scales.

Language Available: Norwegian (Original), English (Translation)

Population Group: General adult population and clinical populations (e.g., psychiatric patients).

Age Group: Adults

Population Details: Originally standardized on Norwegian subjects, including psychiatric hospital staff members and nonpsychotic psychiatric inpatients. The scales are intended for use in studies relating religiosity to personality and mental health. Subsequent research indicated that nonpsychotic psychiatric patients tended to score higher on both scales compared to nonpatients.

Test Methodology: A 5-point Likert scale is used for responses (1 = strongly disagree, 5 = strongly agree). Scores are computed as the mean rating of the eight items for each scale. No formal norms are provided as the scales are strictly research instruments, but means and standard deviations are available in Kaldestad’s original 1992 report for comparative analysis.

Keywords

Eystein Kaldestad, Liberal Belief, Humanistic Morality, Moral Relativism, Religious Liberalism, Internal Consistency, Factorial Validity, Research Instrument, Psychological Assessment, Norway.

Authors

Author ORCID Identifier: N/A (Not provided in source material)

Affiliation Email addresses: N/A (Not provided in source material)

Correspondence Address: N/A (Not provided in source material)

Permissions & Fee and Test Year

The scales were developed in the early 1990s, with primary reports published in 1992 and 1993. The 1993 publication of the slightly revised scale versions, Kaldestad & Stifoss-Hanssen (1993), notes a copyright held by Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc., and is reprinted with permission. Researchers should consult the primary source for current permission requirements; the instrument is primarily intended for academic research use.

Reference’s

• Anastasi, A. (1988). Psychological testing (6th ed.). New York: Macmillan.

• Kaldestad, E. (1991). Intrinsic, extrinsic and quest scales: Development of Norwegian versions. In 0. Wikstrom (Ed.), Klinisk religionspsykologi (pp. 85-101). Uppsala: Teologiska institutionen, Uppsala Universitet.

• Kaldestad, E. (1992). Questionnaires for belief and morality. Journal of Empirical Theology, 5, 70-84.

• Kaldestad, E. (1992). Religious orientation, personality, mental health, and religious activity. Nordic Journal of Psychiatry, 46, 321-328.

• Kaldestad, E. (1993). Letter to the editor [correction]. Nordic Journal of Psychiatry, 47, 305-306.

• Kaldestad, E., & Stifoss-Hanssen, H. (1993). Standardizing measures of religosity for Norwegians. International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, 3, 111-124.

• Weigert, A. (1988). Christian eschatological identities and the nuclear context. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 27, 175-191.

Items of the HUMANISTIC MORALITY/ LIBERAL BELIEF SCALE SCALE

IMPORTANT: The following scale items must be preserved in their original language and must not be changed in any way.

Kaldestad’s Liberal Belief Scale

Please use the following scale to indicate your level of agreement with each of the following statements.

• I = strong disagree
• 2 = partly disagree
• 3 = neutral
• 4 = partly agree
• 5 = strongly agree

1. The Bible cannot be understood literally, and it can be interpreted in different ways.
2. The Bible contains both true and some historically incorrect information.
3. There is a lot of evil in the world, but I doubt whether the devil exists or not.
4. On the basis of the Bible we cannot prophesy the future history of the world.
5. We human beings know little or nothing about the end of the world.
6. People’s life on earth is just as important as a possible life after death.
7. God at last will reconcile to Himself even those people who stand up against Him.
8. I believe that all human beings are good, if they do their best and are sincere.

Kaldestad’s Humanistic Morality Scale

Please use the following scale to indicate your level of agreement with each of the following statements.

• 1 = strong disagree
• 2 = partly disagree
• 3 = neutral
• 4 = partly agree
• 5 = strongly agree

1. Practical love for my neighbor is more important to me than to obey the Ten Commandments.
2. People can from their own life experiences develop their own values for good and evil behaviors.
3. When I need to decide if something is wrong, I consider first of all whether the behavior can hurt anyone.
4. Living together without being married ought to be morally accepted just like marriage.
5. A sexual relationship before marriage ought to be morally accepted if the couple uses
6. contraception or takes the full responsibility for the possible offspring.
7. I do not believe in religiously founded, absolute moral norms.
8. lt is better to evaluate each situation and use reasonable judgment than to obey absolute moral norms.
9. Knowledge, insight, and reason ought to guide people’s behaviors more than religious, moral norms.