God as a Casual Agent Scale

Abstract

The God as a Casual Agent scale (GCA) was initially developed from an extensive pool of 30 items designed to assess an individual’s conviction regarding the efficacy of prayer, the authenticity of miracles, and the experience of receiving divine guidance. Following rigorous pilot testing, this pool was condensed to a concise 14-item instrument based on item-whole correlations.

The final GCA scale comprises two distinct types of items: eight items directly probe the respondent’s personal beliefs concerning God’s divine intervention, while the remaining six items require the respondent to consider and react to the beliefs and experiences of other people. This inclusion of observational items is intended to indirectly gauge the respondent’s own convictions. However, this mixed structure led to criticism regarding a potentially confused factor structure, notably concerning Item 7, which was identified as problematic due to its purely factual nature concerning the beliefs of others.

Keywords

God as a Casual Agent scale, GCA, Attribution Theory, Supernatural Causality, Divine Intervention, Religiosity, Psychological Measurement, Locus of Control, Religious Motivation.

Authors

R. J. Ritzema, C. Young

Purpose

The primary purpose of the God as a Casual Agent scale (GCA) is to quantify an individual’s general predisposition to attribute external events and internal states to God and divine intervention, rather than to purely naturalistic or physical causes. The scale is conceptually rooted in attribution theory, which posits that the explanations individuals adopt for occurrences significantly influence their subsequent behavior.

The authors proposed the GCA as a potentially valuable alternative method for measuring religiosity. Instead of focusing on observable religious behaviors or generalized belief structures, this instrument specifically targets the extent to which a person believes in God’s active, supernatural involvement as a causal agent in the human experience. While this supernatural attribution component represents only one facet of religiosity, it is considered a crucial element for studying certain types of religious behavior.

Construct

The GCA scale measures the construct of **Supernatural Attribution of Causality**. This construct is defined as the tendency to explain life events, both favorable and unfavorable, as resulting from the direct, intentional, and supernatural action of God. The scale scores reflect the degree to which a respondent is predisposed to interpret the world through a lens of divine intervention.

The 14 items utilize a 5-point Likert scale format, ranging from strongly disagree (1) to strongly agree (5). After reverse-scoring seven negatively worded items, the total score ranges from 14 to 70. A higher score indicates a greater tendency to attribute causality to supernatural forces.

Validity

The validity of the GCA scale was initially assessed through an experimental design where subjects rated hypothetical scenarios. These scenarios described actors receiving unexpectedly favorable outcomes, and subjects were asked to indicate, using a 9-point scale, the extent to which they believed the events were caused by natural versus supernatural forces. An analysis of variance (ANOVA) demonstrated that subjects who scored high on the GCA scale attributed significantly more causality to supernatural intervention compared to those who scored low.

Although the raw correlation between GCA scores and the continuous rating of supernatural intervention was not reported, sufficient data was provided to calculate the point biserial correlation (r) between GCA scores and the categorical grouping (high/low) of supernatural intervention ratings, yielding r = .37. It was hypothesized that the Pearson r using the original continuous data might be slightly higher.

Additional evidence for convergent validity was provided by Jackson and Coursey (1988), who found that GCA scores correlated positively with internality (r = .26) as measured by Rotter’s (1966) Internal vs. External Control scale. This finding supports the theoretical perspective that “God control,” though externally oriented, may operate psychologically similarly to an internal Locus of Control (LOC) approach. Furthermore, GCA scores correlated significantly (r = .32) with Hoge’s (1972) Intrinsic Religious Motivation Scale, linking supernatural attribution to deeply internalized religious commitment.

Reliability

The internal consistency reliability of the GCA scale was assessed using Coefficient alpha, yielding a value of .74 for the 14-item instrument. This figure is generally considered acceptable for research purposes in psychology.

Further analysis of item-whole correlations indicated strong consistency across most of the scale. Thirteen of the 14 items had item-whole correlations ranging robustly between .46 and .62. However, Item 7 was identified as a weak item, exhibiting a correlation of only .09. The authors noted that the deletion of this specific item would likely result in a considerable increase in the overall Coefficient alpha, suggesting that, with the exception of Item 7, the reliability of the scale is strong.

Factor Analysis

While the original development focused on item-whole correlations, the factor structure of the GCA scale has been subject to criticism. The primary structural issue stems from the inclusion of two distinct item types: eight items focusing on the respondent’s own beliefs about divine intervention, and six items requiring the respondent to assess and react to the beliefs and experiences of others.

Degelman and Lynn (1995) argued that this distinction leads to a “confused factor structure,” making it difficult to definitively determine the underlying latent construct being measured. Item 7, in particular, was cited as problematic because it asks a factual question about what other people believe, rather than measuring the respondent’s personal attribution style, which undermines the scale’s intended homogeneity.

Instrument

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

Format: 14 items utilizing a 5-point Likert scale (1=Strongly Disagree to 5=Strongly Agree). Seven items are reverse-scored.

Language Available: English (Original)

Population Group: College Students

Age Group: Young Adults

Population Details: The standardization sample consisted of 128 college upper-class students attending a midwestern church-related college. Due to the homogeneity of this specific group, the reported reliability and validity estimates may be artificially deflated.

Test Methodology: Summation of 14 items (with 7 items reverse-scored). Scores range from 14 to 70. Standardization norms for the sample were: Mean = 52.1; Median = 52.7; Standard Deviation = 6.8; Range = 20 to 66.

Keywords

Attribution of Causality, Supernatural Belief, Psychological Assessment, Ritzema, Young, Attribution Theory, Religiosity, Spiritual Assessment, Locus of Control, Religious Psychology.

Authors

Author ORCID Identifier: Not provided in source material.

Affiliation Email addresses: Not provided in source material.

Correspondence Address: Not provided in source material.

Permissions & Fee and Test Year

The scale was published in 1983. Information regarding current usage permissions and associated fees must be sought directly from the authors or the publishing journal, Journal of Psychology and Theology.

Reference’s

• Degelman, D., & Lynn, D. (1995). The development and preliminary validation of the Belief in Divine Intervention Scale. Journal of Psychology and Theology, 23, 37-44.
• Hoge, D. R. (1972). A validated intrinsic religious motivation scale. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 11, 369-376.
• Jackson, L. E., & Coursey, R. D. (1988). The relationship of God control and internal locus of control to intrinsic religious motivation, coping, and purpose in life. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 27, 399-410.
• Pargament, K. I., Sullivan, M., Tyler, F., & Steele, R. (1982). Patterns of attribution of control and individual psychosocial competence. Psychological Reports, 51, 1243-1252.
• Ritzema, R. J., & Young, C. (1983). Causal schemata and the attribution of supernatural causality. Journal of Psychology and Theology, 11, 36-43.
• Rotter, J. B. (1966). Generalized expectancies for internal versus external control of reinforcement. Psychological Monographs, 80, Whole No. 609.
• Watson, P. J., Morris, R. J., & Hood, R. W. Jr. (1990). Extrinsic Scale factors: Correlations and construction of religious orientation types. Journal of Psychology and Christianity, 9, 35-46.

Items of the God as a Casual Agent scale

Following are the items included in the God as a Causal Agent Scale. Response options include (5) strongly agree; (4) agree; (3) undecided; (2) disagree; and (1) strongly disagree.

IMPORTANT: Items 5, 6, 7, 9, 11, 12, & 13 are to be reverse scored.

1. Every new life is a direct miracle of God.
2. A close call in a situation where an accident is likely, is probably God intervening to protect.
3. More than once I have felt that God responded specifically to a prayer that I made.
4. God created the world in 7 days by giving the commands.
5. Events happen or don’t happen quite by chance in this world.
6. Many people who have claimed to feel the presence of God were probably just experiencing their own emotions.
7. Just as in the past when primitive people thought that storms, volcanoes, and other natural events were due to divine action, many people nowadays consider God or the devil responsible for things that really have completely physical causes.
8. Miracles happen much more frequently than most people suspect.
9. I’m usually skeptical when someone tells me that they’re convinced that God did something to change their attitudes or beliefs.
10. God does miraculously heal diseases.
11. One problem with many Christians is that they try to give supernatural explanations for events that probably were caused by natural phenomena.
12. I have never been completely sure that anything that has happened in my life has come as an answer to prayer.
13. One thing I don’t like is the tendency that some people have to call everything they don’t understand a miracle.
14. There have been a number of times in my life when I was convinced that some particular event was caused by direct action of God.