Religious Involvement Inventory

Abstract

The Religious Involvement Inventory (RII) was developed by Hilty, Morgan, and Burns (1984, 1985) as a refinement and critique of the earlier 11-factor scales proposed by King and Hunt (1968, 1969, 1972, 1975). While acknowledging the multivariate approach of King and Hunt as an improvement over purely conceptual typologies, the authors of the RII questioned the earlier scale’s reliance on factors forced to be uncorrelated, items with multiple factor loadings, and the use of extraempirical criteria for item rejection. By employing an oblique rotation and adhering strictly to empirical criteria across diverse religious populations, the RII identified a more parsimonious, seven-factor structure. This multidimensional scale measures distinct aspects of religiosity, providing researchers with a detailed instrument for assessing religious participation and belief.

Keywords

Religious Involvement Inventory, RII, religiosity, King and Hunt scales, Personal Faith, Orthodoxy, Social Conscience, multidimensional scaling, Church Involvement, Intolerance of Ambiguity

Authors

D. M. Hilty, R. L. Morgan, J. E. Burns

Purpose

The primary purpose of the RII was to establish a more empirically sound and parsimonious measure of religious involvement compared to existing instruments, specifically the complex 11-factor structure developed by King and Hunt. The authors sought to overcome methodological limitations in previous scales, such as forced orthogonality and reliance on non-empirical criteria for item selection, thereby yielding a clearer and more robust understanding of the dimensions of religious life.

By defining seven distinct, yet obliquely related, dimensions, the RII aims to capture the complexity of religious experience—ranging from private spiritual practice and theological belief to social engagement and cognitive rigidity—making it suitable for rigorous research in the psychology and sociology of religion.

Construct

The Religious Involvement Inventory is a multidimensional measure designed to assess seven specific components of an individual’s religious life. These components were derived through factor analysis and represent integrated facets of belief and practice:

• Personal Faith: This dimension reflects the degree of active religious faith, encompassing private devotion and an intrinsic orientation toward the importance of religion in one’s life.
• Intolerance of Ambiguity: Revised: This factor measures rigid, categorical thinking, often associated with dogmatism and inflexible worldviews.
• Orthodoxy: This measures the extent to which an individual accepts and acknowledges traditional beliefs and doctrines associated with their church or faith tradition.
• Social Conscience: This dimension assesses beliefs regarding the church’s institutional role and the individual’s personal responsibility concerning social issues, particularly justice and minority rights.
• Knowledge of Religious History: This factor is a measure of an individual’s factual knowledge concerning religious history, figures, and texts.
• Life Purpose: This scale represents a general factor of life purpose, merging components from earlier King and Hunt Purpose in Life scales, indicating a sense of meaning and direction.
• Church Involvement: This dimension reflects the extent of financial contributions and social participation within the church context, typically indicating an extrinsic orientation toward public religious practice.

Validity

The validity of the RII was primarily established through replication studies designed to confirm the seven-factor structure. In the Hilty and Morgan (1985) replication study, the authors successfully identified the same seven oblique factors (totaling 82 items) in two out of three samples, with high consistency in item loadings compared to the original 1984 study. Coefficients of congruence, which measure the similarity of factors across samples, ranged strongly from .84 to .98, suggesting substantial structural stability.

However, the confirmatory testing faced limitations. Although the authors applied a LISREL confirmatory factor model derived from their exploratory analysis, testing this model often involved using the same datasets from which the exploratory structures were extracted. Furthermore, when applied to independent samples, the chi-square tests indicated that the proposed factor structures were not statistically acceptable, though they showed improvement over the null model. Goodness-of-fit indices (GFI) for the three samples were moderate (.712, .734, and .819), leading the researchers to conclude that the results offered, at best, “substantial inroads” into understanding the true factor structure, suggesting that further refinement or validation across diverse populations was needed.

Reliability

The internal consistency of the seven RII scales was assessed using Coefficient alphas. The reliability estimates demonstrated good lower-bound reliability for all dimensions, falling within the generally acceptable range for psychological scales:

• Personal Faith: .87
• Intolerance of Ambiguity: Revised: .83
• Orthodoxy: .85
• Social Conscience: .79
• Knowledge of Religious History: .80
• Life Purpose: .84
• Church Involvement: .81

Factor Analysis

The development of the Religious Involvement Inventory was driven by a re-analysis of the established King and Hunt questionnaire data. King and Hunt had previously utilized a method that enforced uncorrelated (orthogonal) factors, which the RII developers argued artificially constrained the measurement of religiosity. By applying an oblique rotation, which allows factors to correlate naturally, Hilty et al. found that a seven-factor solution provided the most parsimonious and empirically justifiable structure for the data.

Although the initial exploratory factor analysis strongly supported the seven-factor model across multiple samples, subsequent attempts to confirm this structure using advanced techniques like LISREL yielded mixed results. While the model was superior to the null model, the statistical fit indices suggested that the seven-factor model did not achieve conventional standards for acceptable fit across all samples, particularly in one instance where a five-factor solution provided a better fit.

Instrument

Test Type: Paper-and-pencil self-report measure

Format: Most items use a 4-point Likert-type scale (e.g., “strongly agree” to “strongly disagree,” or “regularly” to “seldom or never”). The Knowledge of Religious History items utilize a multiple-choice format with six alternatives.

Language Available: English (Original research)

Population Group: General adult religious populations (primarily Christian denominations)

Age Group: 16 to 90 years old (based on initial standardization sample)

Population Details: Initial study (Hilty et al., 1984) included 758 members of the Mennonite Church Conference (53% females, 47% males). Replication study (Hilty & Morgan, 1985) included 588 individuals affiliated with the West Ohio Conference of the United Methodist denomination, along with subjects from the King and Hunt 1972 and 1975 studies.

Test Methodology: Requires no special skill to administer or score. However, no specific instructions or norms have been developed for use with individuals, limiting its application primarily to research contexts.

Keywords

Psychometric scale, religious attitudes, intrinsic motivation, extrinsic motivation, social psychology, Christian populations, scale construction, Hilty and Morgan

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

Permissions: Information regarding current usage rights and permissions must be obtained directly from the authors or the journal publisher (Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion).

Fee: Fee information is not specified in the source material.

Test Year: 1984 (Primary Publication: Hilty, Morgan, & Burns, 1984); 1985 (Replication/Validation: Hilty & Morgan, 1985).

Reference’s

Abbott, D., Berry, M., & Merideth, W. (1990). Religious belief and practice: A potential asset in helping families. Family Relations, 39, 443-448.

Bernt, F. (1989). Being religious and being altruistic: A study of college service volunteers. Personality and Individual Differences, 10, 663-669.

Ellison, C., Gay, D., & Glass, T. (1989). Does religious commitment contribute to individual life satisfactory? Social Forces, 68, 100-123.

Guth, J., & Green, J. (1990). Religiosity and participation among political activists. Western Political Quarterly, 43, 153-179.

Hilty, D. M., Morgan, R. L., & Burns, J. E. (1984). King and Hunt revisited: Dimensions of religious involvement. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 22, 252-266.

Hilty, D. M., & Morgan, R. L. (1985). Construct validation for the Religious Involvement Inventory: Replication. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 24( I), 75-86.

Jacobson, C. (1992). Religiosity in a black community: An examination of secularization and political values. Review of Religious Research, 33, 215-228.

Johnson, G., Matre, M., & Armbrecht, G. (1991). Race and religiosity: An empirical evaluation of a causal model. Review of Religious Research, 32, 252-266.

King, M., & Hunt, R. (1968). 1968 Questionnaire. Unpublished test.

King, M., & Hunt, R. (1969). Measuring the religious variable: Amended findings. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 8, 321-323.

King, M., & Hunt, R. (1972). Measuring the religious variable: Replication. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 11, 240-251.

King, M., & Hunt, R. (1975). Measuring the religious variable: National replication. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 14, 13-22.

Watson, P., Howard, R., Hood, R., & Morris, R. (1988). Age and religious orientation. Review of Religious Research, 29, 271-280.

Items of the RELIGIOUS INVOLVEMENT INVENTORY

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

Personal Faith

• The amount of time I spend trying to grow in understanding of my faith is:
• How often do you read literature about your faith (or church)?
• How often in the last year have you shared with another church member the problems and joys of trying to live a life of faith in God?
• When faced by decisions regarding social problems, how often do you seek guidance from statements and publications provided by the church?
• How often do you read the Bible?
• How often do you pray privately in places other than at church?
• How often do you talk about religion with your friends, neighbors, or fellow workers?
• When you have decisions to make in your everyday life, how often do you try to find out what God wants you to do?
• During the last year, how often have you visited someone in need, besides your own rel­ atives?
• In talking with members of your family, how often do you yourself mention religion or religious activities?
• How often have you personally tried to convert someone to faith in God?
• I must admit that I don’t do very much to increase my knowledge of God.
• I have had some unusual religious experiences.
• It is important to me to spend periods of time in private religious thought and meditation.

Intolerance of Ambiguity: Revised

• There is only one right way to do anything.
• It is part of one’s patriotic duty to worship in the church of his choice.
• A person either knows the answer to a question or he doesn’t.
• Church leaders should pay attention to recent scientific studies which prove that the white race is best.
• What religion offers me most is comfort when sorrows and misfortune strikes.
• There are two kinds of people in the world: the weak and the strong.
• A person is either a 100% American or he isn’t.
• The purpose of prayer is to secure a happy and peaceful life.
• There are two kinds of women: the pure and the bad.
• You can classify almost all people as either honest or crooked.
• It doesn’t take very long to find out if you can trust a person.

Orthodoxy

• Estimate the extent to which you feel religion is important in your life today.
• To what extent has God influenced your life?
• How often do you ask God to forgive your sins?
• How often do you pray privately in places other than at church?
• I know that God answers my prayers.
• I believe in eternal life.
• Private prayer is one of the most important and satisfying aspects of my religious experience.
• Property (house, automobile, money, investments, etc.) belongs to God; we only hold it in trust for him.
• I believe that God revealed Himself to man in Jesus Christ.
• Religion is especially important to me because it answers many questions about the meaning of life.
• The church is important to me as a place where I get strength and courage for dealing with the trials and problems of life.
• I believe that the Bible provides the basic moral principles to guide every decision of my daily life: with family and neighbors, in business and financial transactions, and as a citizen of the nation and world.
• I believe in salvation as release from sin and freedom for new life with God.
• I believe that the word of God is revealed in the Scriptures.
• I believe in God as Heavenly Father who watches over me and to whom I am accountable.
• I believe that Christ is a living reality.
• I know how it feels to repent and experience forgiveness of sin.
• I have about given up trying to understand “worship” or get much out of it.
• I frequently feel very close to God in prayer, during public worship, or at important moments in my daily life.
• I know that I need God’s continual love and care.

Social Conscience

• I believe that my local congregation should sponsor projects to improve the economic well-being of blacks and other minority groups.
• The church should take the lead in ending injustice toward blacks and other minority groups.
• I am proud that my denomination has taken a stand in favor of equal rights for blacks and other minority groups.
• Churches should support the struggle of black people to achieve equal rights.
• I believe that my local congregation should sponsor projects to protect the rights of blacks and other minority groups.
• I believe that my local congregation should accept as members persons of all races.

Knowledge of Religious History

• Which of the following were among the twelve disciples? (Daniel; John; Judas; Paul; Peter; Samuel)
• Which of the following books are in the Old Testament? (Acts; Amos; Galatians; Hebrews; Hosea; Psalms)
• Which of the following denominations in the U.S. have bishops? (Disciples; Episcopal; Lutheran; Methodist; Presbyterian; Roman Catholic)
• Which of the following books are included in the four Gospels? (James; John; Mark; Matthew; Peter; Thomas)
• Which of the following were Old Testament prophets? (Deuteronomy; Ecclesiastes; Elijah; Isaiah; Jeremiah; Leviticus)
• Which of the following men were leaders of the Protestant Reformation? (Aquinas; Augustine; Calvin; Cranmer; Hegel; Luther)
• Which of the following acts were performed by Jesus Christ during his earthly ministry? (Resisting the temptations of Satan; healing ten lepers; leading his people against the priests of Baal; parting the waters to cross the Red Sea; overcoming Goliath; turning water into wine)
• Which of the following principles are supported by most Protestant denominations? (Bible as the word of God; separation of church and state; power of clergy to forgive sins; final authority of the church; justification by faith; justification by good works)

Life Purpose

• If I should die today, I would feel that my life has been worthwhile.
• I am satisfied that most of the time I live in right relationship to God and to men.
• Most of the time my life seems to be out of my control.
• I usually find life new and exciting.
• My life is full of joy and satisfaction.
• I have discovered satisfying goals and a clear purpose in life.
• My personal existence often seems meaningless and without purpose.
• My life is often empty, filled with despair.
• Facing my daily tasks is usually a source of pleasure and satisfaction to me.

Church Involvement

• Of all your closest friends, how many are also members of your local congregation?
• How would you rate your activity in this congregation?
• Last year, approximately what percentage of your income was contributed to the church?
• In proportion to your income, what do you consider that your contributions to the church are?
• During the last year, what was the average monthly contribution of your family to your local congregation?
• During the last year, how often have your made contributions to the church in addition to the general budget and Sunday School?
• If not prevented by unavoidable circumstances, I attend church.
• I make financial contributions to the church.
• How often do you get together with members of your congregation in addition to church-sponsored meetings?
• How often have you taken Holy Communion (the Lord’s Supper; the Eucharist) during the last year?
• How often do you spend evenings at church meetings or in church work?
• Church activities (meetings, committee work, etc.) are a major source of satisfaction in my life.
• I keep pretty well informed about my congregation and have some influence on its decisions.
• I enjoy working in the activities of the church.