Attitude Toward Christianity Scale

Abstract

The Attitude Toward Christianity Scale (widely known in the psychometric literature as the Francis Scale of Attitude toward Christianity, or FSAC; including Form ASC4B) is one of the most rigorously evaluated and extensively utilized psychometric instruments in the psychology of religion. Developed initially by Leslie J. Francis in 1978 and further adapted for adult and adolescent populations by Francis and Stubbs (1987), the scale is designed to measure an individual’s underlying, deep-seated affective evaluative predisposition toward the Christian faith. Unlike general indices of spiritual well-being or multidimensional measures of religious involvement that conflate doctrinal belief, institutional observance, and religious affiliation, the FSAC focuses specifically and exclusively on an individual’s affective attitude toward five foundational foci of Christianity: God, Jesus Christ, the Bible, prayer, and the church.

The standardized instrument comprises 24 items evaluated on a 5-point Likert response scale ranging from 1 (“Strongly disagree”) to 5 (“Strongly agree”). Fourteen items are phrased negatively and reverse-scored to counter acquiescence response bias, while ten items are phrased positively. Total scale scores range from 24 to 120, where higher scores reflect a more positive affective attitude toward Christianity. The instrument has been translated into dozens of languages and validated cross-culturally across diverse developmental cohorts, ranging from primary school children aged 8 years to older adults across the United Kingdom, North America, Europe, Australia, and Africa. Extensive psychometric evaluations demonstrate exceptional internal consistency, with Cronbach’s alpha coefficients systematically falling between .91 and .98 across child, adolescent, and adult samples. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses consistently substantiate an essentially unidimensional latent construct, demonstrating that personal views regarding God, Jesus, Scripture, prayer, and ecclesiastical worship load robustly on a unified affective continuum. The scale exhibits robust construct, convergent, criterion, and discriminant validity, displaying meaningful structural associations with personality traits (notably Eysenckian psychoticism), subjective well-being, parental socialization practices, and longitudinal developmental trajectories of religious sentiment.

Keywords

Attitude Toward Christianity Scale, Francis Scale of Attitude toward Christianity, FSAC, psychology of religion, religious attitudes, psychometrics, Christian education, scale validation, affective evaluative disposition, unidimensionality, Likert scale, adolescent religiosity, personality and religion, ASC4B, Leslie J. Francis

Authors

The Attitude Toward Christianity Scale was originated and developed by Leslie J. Francis, PhD, ScD, DD, an internationally recognized pioneer in the empirical study of religion, psychology, and religious education. Francis serves as Professor of Religions and Psychology at the Centre for Educational Development, Appraisal and Research (CEDAR) at the University of Warwick, United Kingdom, and is Canon Theologian at St Albans Cathedral. Over a career spanning more than four decades, Professor Francis has authored and co-authored over a hundred scholarly books and more than a thousand peer-reviewed journal articles investigating the operationalization of religious affect, pastoral psychology, personality theory, and Christian education.

The formal extension and psychometric validation of the adult version of the instrument (Form ASC4B) was conducted in collaboration with M. T. Stubbs, alongside subsequent psychometric investigations with prominent psychometricians and psychologists of religion, including Christopher Alan Lewis (Professor of Psychology), John Maltby (Professor of Differential Psychology at the University of Leicester), and Mandy Robbins (Professor of Psychology of Religion). Academic correspondence regarding the scale’s normative developments, short-form derivations, and international cross-cultural adaptations is primarily directed through the Centre for Educational Development, Appraisal and Research (CEDAR), University of Warwick, Coventry, CV4 7AL, United Kingdom.

Purpose

The primary purpose of the Attitude Toward Christianity Scale is to provide a psychometrically robust, unidimensional, and standardized assessment of an individual’s generalized affective response toward the Christian religion. In the history of religious measurement, empirical researchers frequently encountered methodological artifacts resulting from the conflation of religious affect, religious behavior (such as church attendance, sacramental participation, or personal prayer frequency), and religious cognition or orthodoxy (such as literal assent to doctrinal creeds). Measuring religion purely through behavioral frequency indexes creates significant bias when studying populations whose autonomy is constrained—such as young children whose church attendance is mandated by parental authority, or institutionalized elderly individuals whose physical infirmity prohibits congregational attendance. Conversely, measuring religion solely through complex theological propositions demands cognitive sophistication that varies radically with developmental age, formal education, and verbal ability.

To overcome these methodological vulnerabilities, Francis (1978, 1993) operationalized religious sentiment through the construct of an “attitude.” Drawing on classic psychometric principles, the scale aims to capture an internal, affective, evaluative predisposition that underpins and precedes both cognitive assent and overt behavioral action. The scale was purposefully formulated to measure attitudes specifically toward Christianity, rather than a nebulous or non-specific construct of “spirituality” or generic “religious interest.” By embedding explicit references to Jesus Christ, God, prayer, the Bible, and the church, the instrument assesses personal orientation toward the concrete, historically situated elements defining the Christian tradition.

In educational contexts, the scale was created to monitor longitudinal shifts in student attitudes throughout primary and secondary schooling, providing empirical data to evaluate the impact of religious education curricula, denominational school ethos, and developmental maturation during adolescence. In psychological and sociological research, the scale facilitates rigorous testing of theories regarding the secularization hypothesis, gender differences in religiosity, family socialization patterns, and the interface between religion and mental health. Within clinical and counseling frameworks, the FSAC serves as an objective baseline instrument to evaluate how an individual’s emotional posture toward the Christian faith may act as a psychological coping mechanism, a buffer against distress, or, in certain dysfunctional contexts, a source of moral scrupulosity or existential conflict.

Psychological Construct

The underlying construct assessed by the Attitude Toward Christianity Scale is conceptualized by Francis as an “underlying, deep-seated, and relatively stable evaluative predisposition” directed toward the central symbols, practices, and institutions of the Christian religion. Rather than treating religious attitudes as fragmented, domain-specific judgments, the scale rests on the construct validity of a generalized, latent affective posture. This unidimensional construct unifies five distinct yet organically interconnected operational foci:

1. Evaluative Posture Toward God

This operational focus examines the personal salience, experiential reality, and relational support attributed to God. Items within this domain assess whether the respondent feels that God is actively engaged in their personal well-being (e.g., “God helps me to lead a better life”, “God helps me to face my problems”) versus feeling existential alienation, cosmic indifference, or ontological doubt (e.g., “The idea of God means nothing to me”, “I feel that God does not exist”, “I feel that God is completely distant from me”). This dimension captures the emotional resonance of divine attachment and personal relevance.

2. Affective Orientation Toward Jesus Christ

Because Christianity is fundamentally Christocentric, an attitude measure must assess the central figure of the faith. The construct operationalizes Jesus Christ not merely as an abstract historical figure or an element of propositional dogma, but as a living, relational reality with perceived agency in the respondent’s contemporary life (e.g., “I know that Jesus helps me”, “Jesus is very important to me”, “Jesus helps me to live a good life”). Negative affective valence is indexed by apathy or total emotional detachment (e.g., “Jesus does not mean anything to me”).

3. Valuation of Sacred Scripture (The Bible)

The biblical text serves as the primary revelatory authority within Christian tradition. The affective construct measures how an individual subjectively values and responds to Scripture. Rather than assessing fundamentalist literalism or hermeneutical sophisticated knowledge, the scale measures whether Scripture is perceived as an inspiring, living resource for personal guidance (e.g., “I find it inspiring to listen to the Bible by myself or with other people”) or dismissed as an obsolete, irrelevant historical artifact (e.g., “I think the Bible is out of date”).

4. Personal Orientation Toward Prayer

Prayer represents the interior, relational practice of Christian communication with the divine. The construct examines the perceived efficacy, existential validity, and comfort derived from private communication with God (e.g., “Praying to God helps me to face my problems”). Negative evaluative dispositions characterize prayer as pointless, unreciprocated, or emotionally barren (e.g., “Saying my prayers does no good”, “I believe that God does not answer prayer”, “To pray to God is an empty experience”, “Praying does not help me”).

5. Attitude Toward the Ecclesial Institution (The Church)

Christianity possesses an intrinsically corporate, liturgical, and communal structure. The construct evaluates the respondent’s affective orientation toward church services, the broader utility of ecclesiastical institutions in contemporary civilization, and the integrity of congregational communities. Items measure perceptions of liturgical engagement versus perceived boredom (e.g., “Church services are boring”), social utility (e.g., “The church is of no value to society today”, “It is of no use to attend a church”), and cynical perceptions of congregants (e.g., “I believe that people who go to church are usually hypocrites”).

Although these five components span both private internal states (prayer, personal belief in God and Jesus) and public external realities (church attendance, the institutional Bible), psychometric modeling demonstrates that they do not form discrete, orthogonal factors. Instead, they operate as coherent manifest indicators of a singular, integrated, latent affective predisposition toward Christianity as a unified cultural and theological entity.

Theoretical Framework

The Attitude Toward Christianity Scale is anchored in foundational social psychological and psychometric theories regarding the structural nature of human attitudes, measurement theory, and the developmental psychology of religion. The primary theoretical architecture draws upon the classic paradigm of attitude theory formulated by Martin Fishbein and Icek Ajzen (1975) within their Theory of Reasoned Action and subsequent Theory of Planned Behavior.

Attitude-Behavior Consistency and Specificity

A longstanding debate in social psychology, initiated by early empirical skeptics such as Wicker (1969), contended that generalized attitudes are exceedingly poor predictors of concrete, observable behaviors. Fishbein and Ajzen resolved this paradox by articulating the Principle of Compatibility (or correspondence): attitudes predict behaviors with substantial precision only when both construct and action are measured at an equivalent level of specificity across four elements—action, target, context, and time. Francis applied this theoretical breakthrough to the psychology of religion. He posited that generic measures of “religiosity,” “spirituality,” or “cosmic beliefs” fail to predict specific Christian behaviors (such as prayer, liturgical attendance, or scriptural reading) because their target specificity is mismatched. By aligning the target explicitly with the core symbols and practices of Christianity, the Attitude Toward Christianity Scale secures high attitude-behavior congruence.

Campbell’s Paradigm and Evaluative Dispositions

The scale also reflects the theoretical perspective of Donald T. Campbell regarding attitudes as acquired behavioral dispositions. Under Campbell’s paradigm, an attitude acts as an underlying latent force that lowers the threshold for an individual to engage in a constellation of related behaviors. A person who possesses a highly positive evaluative disposition toward Christianity finds it subjectively easier, more satisfying, and more habitual to pray, attend liturgy, or seek moral guidance from scripture. Conversely, when the affective attitude is low or hostile, the behavioral threshold becomes insurmountable, resulting in cessation of religious practice.

Distinction from Allport’s Motivational Framework

In the psychology of religion, Gordon Allport’s dual paradigm of intrinsic and extrinsic religious orientation has long held sway. While Allport’s model investigates the motivational mechanism driving religious adherence (whether religion is lived as an ultimate end in itself or used as an instrumental means to secure social status or comfort), it presupposes an active religious life. Francis observed that Allportian scales are psychometrically ill-suited for general, secularized, or adolescent populations where many individuals have completely ceased or never commenced religious participation. The Francis theoretical framework establishes that an affective attitude can be measured universally along a bipolar continuum—from deep hostility through neutral indifference to enthusiastic devotion—regardless of whether the participant is an active churchgoer, an agnostic student, or a professed atheist.

Validity

The validity of the Attitude Toward Christianity Scale has been subjected to extensive empirical examination across numerous national contexts, developmental age brackets, and cultural environments over more than four decades.

Face and Content Validity

Face validity is self-evident; subjects completing the 24 items are immediately aware that the instrument measures personal evaluation of Christian beliefs, figures, and practices. Content validity was established through thorough item-generation procedures reflecting the core liturgical, scriptural, and doctrinal pillars of classical Christian theology. Systematic item review by educationalists, developmental psychologists, and theologians confirmed that the five content foci (God, Jesus, Bible, prayer, church) encompass the essential affective spectrum of the Christian faith without relying on esoteric, denominational dogmas (such as specific Marian dogmas, predestination theories, or sacramental counts) that would introduce sectarian confounds between Catholic, Protestant, or Orthodox respondents.

Construct and Criterion Validity

Francis (1978, 1988, 1993) established that construct validity in attitude measurement is inferred by demonstrating that scale scores systematically predict observable religious behaviors and developmental patterns. Multiple large-scale empirical studies have verified these relationships:

• Behavioral Prediction: FSAC scores demonstrate massive, statistically significant correlations with frequency of personal prayer (typically r > .70 to .80) and church attendance (r > .65 to .75) across childhood, adolescence, and adulthood.
• Parental Religious Socialization: In studies involving thousands of secondary school pupils, Francis observed that scores systematically reflect maternal and paternal religious practice, tracking the theoretical models of familial religious transmission.
• Developmental Decline: Longitudinal and cross-sectional investigations show that the scale reliably maps the well-documented developmental dip in religious sentiment that occurs during the transition from late childhood into mid-adolescence, confirming its sensitivity to maturational changes.

Convergent and Discriminant Validity

The scale demonstrates strong convergent validity with alternative measures of religious commitment, such as the Santa Clara Strength of Religious Faith Questionnaire and Glock and Stark’s Dimensions of Religious Commitment. In discriminant validity testing, research consistently demonstrates that the FSAC does not simply measure generalized social desirability or a naive “lie” tendency. Correlations between the FSAC and Lie Scales (such as those embedded within the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire) are typically negligible or modest (r < .15), demonstrating that high scores do not merely reflect a need for social approval.

Differential Validity: The Personality Interface

Extensive research conducted by Francis, Eysenck, Maltby, and Lewis has evaluated the instrument against the three-dimensional personality model of Hans J. Eysenck (Extraversion, Neuroticism, and Psychoticism). Across dozens of independent samples of children, university students, and adults, FSAC scores exhibit a robust, negative correlation with Psychoticism (P), generally ranging from r = -.30 to r = -.55. Because low Psychoticism reflects high tender-mindedness, empathy, social conformity, and concern for others, this enduring empirical link provides powerful construct validation for the scale as an index of prosocial, tender-minded religious affect. Meanwhile, correlations with Neuroticism (emotional stability) and Extraversion are consistently negligible, confirming that the scale is not confounded by baseline affective psychopathology or sociability.

Reliability

The psychometric evaluation of the Attitude Toward Christianity Scale has consistently demonstrated some of the highest reliability indices recorded in psychological research for a 24-item Likert instrument.

Internal Consistency

In the initial standardization sample for the children’s version (Form ASC4B) comprising pupils aged 8 to 16 years, Francis (1978, 1988) reported Cronbach’s alpha coefficients ranging between .954 and .971 across distinct age cohorts. Subsequent independent replications involving large samples in England, Northern Ireland, Scotland, the Republic of Ireland, and the United States have consistently produced alpha coefficients between .91 and .97 for adolescents, and between .95 and .98 for adult populations (Francis & Stubbs, 1987; Lewis, 1995; Maltby, 1994). Split-half reliability coefficients, calculated using the Spearman-Brown prophecy formula, routinely exceed .94.

Item-to-Total Statistics

Analysis of item-rest (corrected item-total) correlations further attests to the scale’s exceptional internal coherence. In child samples, item-rest correlations range from .40 to .87. In adult and undergraduate populations, corrected item-total correlations range from .42 to .92, with the vast majority of items clustering well above .65. Negatively phrased, reverse-scored items function with psychometric properties comparable to their positively phrased counterparts, confirming that the scale successfully counters response bias without degrading measurement fidelity.

Test-Retest Stability

Longitudinal and short-interval test-retest studies confirm high temporal stability. Across intervals ranging from two weeks to several months, test-retest reliability coefficients among stable populations typically fall between r = .86 and r = .94, demonstrating that the instrument assesses an enduring affective predisposition rather than transient, fluctuating mood states.

Factor Analysis

The dimensionality of the 24-item Francis Scale has been scrutinized via both Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) and Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) across diverse international datasets.

Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA)

When the 24 items of the scale are subjected to exploratory factor analysis (using principal components analysis or common factor extraction with unrotated and oblique solutions), the scree plot uniformly indicates an unmistakable single-factor solution. Across studies published by Francis (1978, 1993), Lewis (1995), and Maltby (1994):

• The first unrotated principal factor accounts for a massive proportion of the total item variance, typically ranging from 52% to 68%.
• Eigenvalues for the dominant first factor regularly exceed 12.0 to 15.0, whereas the eigenvalue of the second extracted factor consistently drops below 1.50, failing both the Kaiser-Guttman criterion and Cattell’s scree test for substantial multidimensionality.
• Every individual item exhibits primary factor loadings on this latent religious affect dimension well in excess of .50, with many items (particularly those referencing God’s personal relevance and the efficacy of prayer) loading between .75 and .90. Minor secondary factor splits occasionally surface purely as linguistic method artifacts (distinguishing positively worded items from negatively worded items), rather than substantive substantive constructs.

Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA)

Subsequent psychometric investigations utilizing structural equation modeling (SEM) to perform confirmatory factor analysis have verified the unidimensional model. While strict, zero-residual unidimensional models across 24 items often incur elevated chi-square values due to high statistical power in large samples (N > 1,000) and localized item-pair error covariances (e.g., between items sharing identical linguistic stems like “Jesus helps me” and “God helps me”), models allowing for method effects among reverse-coded items demonstrate excellent goodness-of-fit indices:

• Comparative Fit Index (CFI): Routinely exceeds .95 to .97.
• Tucker-Lewis Index (TLI): Typically spans .94 to .96.
• Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA): Consistently falls within acceptable margins (.04 to .06).
• Standardized Root Mean Square Residual (SRMR): Typically < .05.

These structural findings robustly support Francis’s theoretical postulate: despite the external institutional diversity between church attendance, biblical reading, and private prayer, an individual’s psychological orientation toward Christianity operates as an integrated, singular affective domain.

Instrument / Measurement Tool

• Instrument Name: Attitude Toward Christianity Scale (Francis Scale of Attitude toward Christianity; Form ASC4B)
• Author: Leslie J. Francis (with M. T. Stubbs for the adult derivation)
• Construct Assessed: Affective evaluative predisposition toward Christianity (encompassing God, Jesus, the Bible, prayer, and the church)
• Assessment Type: Self-report psychometric rating scale
• Item Count: 24 items
• Target Population: Adults and adolescents (a closely aligned child form is suitable for youth aged 8–16 years)
• Completion Time: Approximately 3 to 5 minutes
• Response Format: 5-point Likert scale (1 = Strongly disagree, 2 = Disagree, 3 = Uncertain, 4 = Agree, 5 = Strongly agree)
• Scoring Mechanism:
  • Direct-Scored Items (10 items): Items 1, 2, 4, 8, 11, 13, 16, 20, 22, and 24. These are phrased positively toward Christianity and scored directly from 1 to 5: Strongly disagree = 1, Disagree = 2, Uncertain = 3, Agree = 4, Strongly agree = 5.
  • Reverse-Scored Items (14 items): Items 3, 5, 6, 7, 9, 10, 12, 14, 15, 17, 18, 19, 21, and 23. These are phrased negatively toward Christianity and must be reversed prior to summing: Strongly disagree = 5, Disagree = 4, Uncertain = 3, Agree = 2, Strongly agree = 1.
• Total Score Range: 24 to 120 points.
• Score Interpretation:
  • 24 to 48: Highly negative/rejecting attitude toward Christianity.
  • 49 to 71: Moderately negative to skeptical attitude.
  • 72: Theoretical neutral midpoint (reflecting consistent uncertainty or balanced ambivalent responses).
  • 73 to 95: Moderately positive attitude toward Christianity.
  • 96 to 120: Highly positive, deeply affirming affective commitment to Christianity.

Permissions & Fee and Test Year

The original child version of the Attitude Toward Christianity Scale was formally introduced into the peer-reviewed psychometric literature in 1978 by Leslie J. Francis. The standardized adult adaptation (Form ASC4B) was subsequently published in 1987 by Leslie J. Francis and M. T. Stubbs in Personality and Individual Differences.

Licensing and Academic Use: The scale is widely considered an open-access psychometric instrument for non-commercial academic, educational, and psychological research. Professor Francis and his research collaborators placed the scale items within the public academic domain via scholarly journals to encourage widespread empirical investigation into the psychology of religion. Researchers and educational practitioners are permitted to utilize, administer, and translate the instrument in empirical studies without paying licensing fees or royalties, provided that proper academic citation and attribution are accorded to the original publications. For commercial testing, large-scale institutional deployments, or electronic application distribution outside pure academic scholarship, researchers should seek formal authorization from the author via the Centre for Educational Development, Appraisal and Research (CEDAR) at the University of Warwick.

References

• Ajzen, I., & Fishbein, M. (1977). Attitude-behavior relations: A theoretical analysis and review of empirical research. Psychological Bulletin, 84(5), 888–918. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.84.5.888
• Francis, L. J. (1978). Attitude and longitude: A study in measurement. Character Potential: A Record of Research, 8, 119–130.
• Francis, L. J. (1988). Measuring attitude towards Christianity during childhood and adolescence. Personality and Individual Differences, 10(6), 695–698. https://doi.org/10.1016/0191-8869(89)90230-0
• Francis, L. J. (1992). Reliability and validity of the Francis Scale of attitude towards Christianity (adult). Journal of Comparative Religious Education and Values, 4, 17–19.
• Francis, L. J. (1993). Attitudes towards Christianity during childhood and adolescence: Assembling the jigsaw. Journal of Beliefs & Values, 14(2), 4–6. https://doi.org/10.1080/1361767930140202
• Francis, L. J., & Stubbs, M. T. (1987). Measuring attitudes towards Christianity: From childhood to adulthood. Personality and Individual Differences, 8(5), 741–743. https://doi.org/10.1016/0191-8869(87)90074-9
• Lewis, C. A. (1995). Religiosity and personality among US adults. Personality and Individual Differences, 18(2), 293–295. https://doi.org/10.1016/0191-8869(94)00155-B
• Maltby, J. (1994). The reliability and validity of the Francis scale of attitude towards Christianity among Republic of Ireland adults. The Irish Journal of Psychology, 15(4), 595–598. https://doi.org/10.1080/03033910.1994.10558032

13. Items of the Scale (Questionnaire)