RELIGIOUS IDENTIFICATION SCALE OF THE MMPI

Abstract

The Religious Identification Scale (RI) is a 12-item content scale derived from the original Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI), developed by J. H. Panton in 1979. Panton, a prison psychologist, created the RI scale primarily to measure an individual’s identification with and participation in religious activities, regardless of specific faith or denomination. The scale was initially intended to facilitate the prediction of adjustment versus maladjustment among incarcerated populations, based on the observation that inmates with strong religious identification often adjusted more adequately to prison confinement. High scores reflect strong adherence to religious beliefs and active participation in worship traditions, while low scores indicate lack of participation or rejection of religious principles altogether.

Keywords

Religious Identification Scale, RI scale, MMPI, Personality Inventory, Prison Adjustment, Incarceration, Panton, Religious Attitudes, Psychological Scale, Criterion Validity.

Authors

J. H. Panton, S. R. Hathaway, J. C. McKinley

Purpose

The primary purpose of the Religious Identification Scale (RI) is to quantify an individual’s level of identification with and engagement in religious practices. Panton developed the scale specifically within a correctional context, aiming to establish a reliable measure that could predict the likelihood of successful adjustment within a prison environment. The scale serves as an indicator of commitment to religious principles and behavior, which Panton found correlated positively with better adaptation to confinement.

Although the RI scale was developed based on the item pool of the original MMPI (Hathaway & McKinley, 1951), it is an auxiliary content scale, providing focused insight into the religious dimension of personality. It utilizes a limited number of items from the MMPI’s original “religious attitudes” category (Category 15), carefully selected to minimize implications of psychotic illness or overly specific fundamentalist beliefs, ensuring broad applicability across Judeo-Christian and nonfaith-specific religious contexts.

Construct

The RI scale is designed to tap into the construct of Religious Identification, defined as the degree of belief in, identification with, and individual or collective participation in religious worship traditions. This construct is measured irrespective of the specific denomination or faith practiced.

The scale consists of 12 items, approximately half of which reflect broad Judeo-Christian content, and the remainder address nonfaith-specific religious content. The RI scale demonstrates significant overlap with the Religious Fundamentalism Scale (REL: Wiggins, 1966), sharing 10 items. While both scales measure aspects of religious adherence, the RI is intended to measure general identification and behavior, whereas the REL contains two additional items reflecting more overt fundamentalist beliefs, suggesting a potential, albeit small, distinction in the underlying constructs measured by the two instruments.

Validity

Panton (1979) primarily established the validity of the RI scale through demonstrating strong content validity and criterion-related validity.

Content validity was addressed through a rigorous rational-intuitive evaluation of the original 19 religious-content items from the MMPI item pool. Items implying psychotic illness or reflecting narrow fundamentalist beliefs were systematically rejected, resulting in a 12-item scale congruent with the intended construct of broad religious identification and adherence.

Empirical validation relied on the method of contrasted groups. Using distinct samples of adjusted versus maladjusted male prison inmates, Panton found significant differences in mean RI scores. An RI cutting score of 7 successfully identified 89% of the maladjusted sample and 95% of the adjusted sample in the initial study. A subsequent study confirmed these results, identifying 90% of the maladjusted group and 94% of the adjusted group. Further validation by Megargee and Carbonell (1985) confirmed the RI’s predictive power, showing moderate negative correlations with indicators of prison maladjustment, including recidivism (-.18), escape probability (-.25), and habitual criminalism (-.18). It also showed small positive correlations with adjustment ratings by prison staff and work performance, reinforcing its validity as a measure of adaptive behavior in correctional settings.

Reliability

Information concerning the reliability of the Religious Identification Scale (RI) is notably absent in the primary literature. Neither Panton’s original development study (1979) nor the subsequent validation study by Megargee and Carbonell (1985) reported specific data regarding internal consistency (such as Cronbach’s alpha) or test-retest reliability for the RI scale.

Factor Analysis

Detailed reports of factor analysis for the 12 items comprising the Religious Identification Scale (RI) are not readily available or were not published in the seminal works by Panton (1979) or subsequent research utilizing the scale. Given the scale’s derivation via rational-intuitive content selection rather than empirical factor extraction, its underlying factor structure remains largely unexamined in the context of the reported literature.

Instrument

Test Type: Personality Inventory Content Scale (Derived from the MMPI)

Format: True/False self-report questionnaire (12 items)

Language Available: English (Original MMPI item pool language)

Population Group: Clinical and Non-clinical adults; specifically normed on male prison inmates.

Age Group: Adults (Typically 18 years and older)

Population Details: The scale was initially normed on male prison inmates, including samples categorized as adjusted (n=117) and maladjusted (n=117) to the prison environment. Subsequent research utilized a sample of 1,214 male offenders (Megargee & Carbonell, 1985). Subjects generally require a minimum of a sixth-grade reading level to complete the full MMPI.

Test Methodology: The RI scale is derived from 12 specific items embedded within the original 566 items of the MMPI. It is typically administered as part of the full inventory, which takes up to 90 minutes. Scoring is based on raw scores ranging from 0 to 12. Unlike standard MMPI scales, the RI scale does not include a K-correction or any other internal adjustment procedure to account for response bias (self-favorableness versus self-criticalness). Due to the deletion of almost all RI items during the development of the MMPI-2 (Butcher et al., 1989), the RI scale cannot be calculated from MMPI-2 data.

Keywords

Panton, Correctional Psychology, Religious Adherence, Psychological Adjustment, Raw Score, T-Score, Criterion-Related Validity, Item Content Scale, True/False.

Authors

Author ORCID Identifier: N/A (ORCIDs not standard at time of development)

Affiliation Email addresses: N/A

Correspondence Address: Based on the original publication: J. H. Panton, State Prison System (Address specific to 1979 publication)

Permissions & Fee and Test Year

The Religious Identification Scale (RI) was developed and published in 1979. As a content scale derived from the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI), its use and administration are subject to the copyright and licensing requirements of the MMPI, which is owned by the University of Minnesota and distributed by Pearson Assessments. Access to the original MMPI item pool is required to score the RI scale, which is not possible using the revised MMPI-2 or MMPI-3 versions.

Reference’s

• Butcher, J. N., Dahlstrom, W. G., Graham, J. R., Tellegen, A., & Kaemmer, B. (1989). Minnesota Multiphasic Personality lnventory-2 (MMPl-2): Manual for administration and scoring. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
• Hathaway, S. R., & McKinley, J. C. (1940). A multiphasic personality schedule (Minnesota): I. Construction of the schedule. Journal of Psychology, 30, 249-254.
• Hathaway, S. R., & McKinley, J.C. (1951). The Minnesota Multiphasic personality inventory manual-revised. New York: The Psychological Corporation.
• Megargee, E. I., & Carbonell, J. L. (1985). Predicting prison adjustment with MMPI correctional scales. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 53, 874-883.
• Panton, J. H. (1979). An MMPI item content scale to measure religious identification within a state prison population. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 35, 588-591.
• Perkins, S. R., & Goldberg, L. R. (1964). Contextual effects of the MMPI. Journal of Consulting Psychology, 28, 133-140.
• Wiggins, J. S. (1966). Substantive dimensions of self-report in the MMPI item pool. Psychological Monographs: General and Applied, 80, (22, whole no. 630).

Items of the RELIGIOUS IDENTIFICATION SCALE OF THE MMPI

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

MMPI Item Keyed

Number Response Item

95 True I go to church almost every week.

98 True I believe in the second coming of Christ.

Source: Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI). Copyright © 1942, 1943 (renewed 1970) by the University of Minnesota.