OMNIBUS PERSONALITY INVENTORY – RELIGIOUS ORIENTATION SCALE

Abstract

The Omnibus Personality Inventory–Religious Orientation Scale (OPI-RO), initially referred to as the “Religious Liberalism Scale,” is a 26-item true-false subscale of the comprehensive Omnibus Personality Inventory (OPI: Heist & Yonge, 1968, Form F). Developed primarily for use in educational research among college students, the OPI-RO assesses individual attitudes, opinions, and values concerning religious belief and practice.

The scale conceptualizes religious orientation as a bipolar dimension: high scores indicate a skeptical or liberal attitude towards conventional religious practices, reflecting low religiosity; conversely, low scores suggest a strong commitment to orthodox or fundamentalist beliefs, indicating high religiosity and general conservatism. The RO scale is strongly related to the Autonomy Scale (Au) within the OPI, together tapping a broader dimension of “authoritarianism versus nonauthoritarianism.” Scores range from 0 to 26, typically converted to standard scores (M=50, SD=10) for interpretation.

Keywords

Omnibus Personality Inventory, Religious Orientation, Religious Liberalism Scale, Psychometric properties, Dogmatism, Conservatism, College Students, Educational Research, Heist & Yonge, Authoritarianism.

Authors

Paul Heist, George Yonge

Purpose

The primary purpose of the OPI-RO is to measure individual attitudes and values regarding religious commitment within the broader context of the Omnibus Personality Inventory (OPI). The OPI itself was designed as an eclectic instrument to assess selected attitudes, values, and interests relevant to academic readiness and activity among college populations, specifically intended for use in educational research.

More specifically, the RO scale aims to quantify the degree of an individual’s orientation along a continuum ranging from religious liberalism to religious fundamentalism. High scores quantify a skeptical or rejecting stance toward orthodox religion, while low scores indicate a strong, often dogmatic, commitment to traditional beliefs and practices, often associated with general conservatism.

Construct

The scale measures the construct of Religious Orientation, defined by the authors as a bipolar dimension ranging from fundamental religious commitment (low scores) to liberal religious commitment (high scores). This construct reflects the individual’s stance on conventional religious beliefs, practices, and associated dogmatic thinking.

Critically, the OPI-RO scale is highly intertwined with cognitive style. Its strong correlation with the Autonomy Scale (Au) suggests that the RO scale primarily taps into a dimension described as “freedom to learn” or the broader psychological construct of authoritarianism versus nonauthoritarianism. Consequently, low RO scores imply pragmatic, utilitarian, and dogmatic qualities in belief and behavior, viewing religiousness as rigid, while high scores suggest greater intellectual flexibility and skepticism.

Validity

Heist and Yonge (1968) initially established content validity through careful item selection, ensuring congruence with the intended religious orientation construct by borrowing items from existing instruments. Subsequent research has concentrated on establishing concurrent and construct validity.

Concurrent validity is supported by significant correlations between RO scores and religious behavior; for instance, students reporting attending religious services more than once a week had drastically lower raw scores (4.9) compared to students attending only once or twice per year (17.3). Furthermore, the RO was positively correlated with academic achievement indicators, specifically verbal (.26) and mathematical (.27) performance on the SAT, suggesting a link between religious orientation and general intellectual achievement.

Construct validity is evidenced through intercorrelations with other OPI scales: the RO scale was positively correlated with Autonomy (Au = .63), Complexity of Thought (CO = .46), and Theoretical/Scientific Interests (TO = .35), and negatively correlated with Practical Outlook (PO = -.40). These relationships confirm that religious liberalism (high RO score) is associated with nonauthoritarian, complex, and theoretical intellectual styles. Convergent validity studies showed expected significant negative correlations with the Study of Values–Religious Scale (-.66) and positive correlations with independence and social presence scales on the California Personality Inventory.

Reliability

The reliability of the OPI-RO scale has been assessed using both internal consistency and test-retest procedures, demonstrating moderate to high stability. For the large normative sample (N = 7,283), the internal consistency was established using a Kuder-Richardson coefficient of .86. A subsequent study involving 400 college freshmen reported an even higher split-half Spearman Brown coefficient of .91.

Test-retest reliability estimates, based on intervals of three to four weeks, also demonstrated high stability. A sample of 67 female college students yielded a stability coefficient of .92, while a sample of 71 upper-class students resulted in a coefficient of .91. These findings collectively support the reliability of the RO scale for measuring the intended construct over short periods.

Factor Analysis

Factor analysis of the 14 OPI scales provides considerable support for the RO scale’s structural positioning. The RO scale loads significantly on two distinct factors. It shows a negative loading on Factor 1, identified as anti-intellectual authoritarianism (-.41), and a very strong positive loading on Factor 8, identified specifically as religious orientation (.88). This factor structure confirms the theoretical understanding that low RO scores are fundamentally linked to utilitarian, pragmatic, and dogmatic personality characteristics.

The relationship of the RO scale to the OPI factor structure was found to be stable over time (Elton & Terry, 1969). This stability reinforces the notion that the scale’s primary value may lie in assessing cognitive style (flexibility) as it relates to religious belief, rather than serving as a comprehensive measure of religiousness in isolation.

Instrument

Test Type: Self-report personality inventory subscale

Format: 26 True-False items, administered within the 385-item OPI (Form F).

Language Available: English (Original)

Population Group: College students and young adults

Age Group: Late adolescent and young adult (typically 18-22 years old)

Population Details: Norms based on 7,283 college freshmen (3,540 men, 3,743 women) from 37 diverse institutions across 14 states. The overall sample mean was 11.8 (SD=6.2).

Test Methodology: Group or individual administration of the full OPI; typically requires 45 minutes; untimed. Separate administration of the RO items is generally not recommended.

Keywords

Religious Liberalism, Religious Conservatism, Dogmatic Thinking, Autonomy, Cognitive Style, Test-retest reliability, Internal Consistency, College Freshmen, OPI-RO.

Authors

Author ORCID Identifier: Not provided in source content.

Affiliation Email addresses: Not provided in source content.

Correspondence Address: Not provided in source content.

Permissions & Fee and Test Year

The Omnibus Personality Inventory (OPI) and its Religious Orientation Scale (RO) were published in 1968. Normative data relies exclusively on the standard administration of the full OPI. Separate administration of the 26 RO items is not recommended due to insufficient data regarding its independent psychometric properties. The original manual was published by The Psychological Corporation (now Pearson Assessment), which holds current rights and must be contacted for permissions and fee structure.

Reference’s

• Baird, L. L. (1990). A 24-year longitudinal study of the development of religious ideas. Psychological Reports, 66, 479-482.
• Chickering, A. W. (1974). The impact of various college environments on personality development. Journal of the American College Health Association, 23, 82-93.
• Dellas, M., & Jernigan, L. P. (1990). Affective personality characteristics associated with undergraduate ego identity formation. Journal of Adolescent Research, 5, 306-324.
• Elton, C. F., & Terry. T. R. (1969). Factor stability of the Omnibus Personality Inventory. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 16, 373-374.
• Heist, P., & Yonge, G. (1968). Omnibus Personality Inventory: Form F manual. New York: The Psychological Corporation.
• Kuh, G. D. (1976). Persistence of the impact of college on attitudes and values. Journal of College Student Personnel, 17, 116-122.
• Lavin, T. J., & Prull, R. W. (1989). Student personality traits and values across generations. Journal of College Student Development, 30, 407-412.
• Tinsley, D. J., Tinsley, H. E. A., Boone, S., & Shim-Li, C. (1993). Prediction of scientist-practitioner behavior using personality scores obtained during graduate school. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 40, 511-517.

Items of the OMNIBUS PERSONALITY INVENTORY­ RELIGIOUS ORIENTATION SCALE

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

OPI Item Keyed Number Response

Item

• I pray several times a week.
• In matters of religion it really does not matter what one believes. I believe there is a God.
• Each person should interpret the Bible for himself.
• There must be something wrong with a person who is lacking in religious feeling.
• I generally prefer being with people who are not religious. I believe in a life hereafter.
• When it comes to differences of opinion in religion, we should be careful not to compromise with those whose beliefs are different from ours.
• It doesn’t matter to me what church a man belongs to, or whether or not he belongs to a church at all.
• Every person should have complete faith in a supernatural power whose decisions are obeyed without question.
• My church, faith, or denomination has the only true approach to God.
• When science contradicts religion, it is because of scientific hypotheses that have not been and cannot be tested.
• I have read little or none of the Bible.
• The prophets of the Old Testament predicted the events that are happening today.
• God hears our prayers.
• In religious matters I believe I would have to be called a skeptic or an agnostic.

Note: the ROS is best administered in the context of the OPI, not as an independent scale.