Religious Attitude Scale

Abstract

The Religious Attitude Scale (RAS), developed by Pamela K. Poppleton and G. W. Pilkington in 1963 at the University of Sheffield, is an established psychometric instrument designed to measure individual differences in attitudes toward religion, specifically within Christian-heritage and academic populations. Originating from the psychometric traditions of Louis Leon Thurstone’s method of equal-appearing intervals and subsequently adapted for Rensis Likert’s summated ratings, the instrument consists of 21 carefully calibrated items. The scale evaluates an individual’s stance across foundational theological beliefs, institutional religious practices, moral-ethical imperatives, and the perceived epistemological tension between science, rationality, and religious dogma. Each item is associated with a calibrated Thurstone scale value ranging from 0.62 (indicating highly favorable or orthodox religious attitudes) to 10.37 (reflecting skeptical, secular, or naturalistic attitudes), while respondent endorsement is captured on a 5-point Likert-type response scale ranging from Strongly agree to Strongly disagree. Across multiple validation cohorts comprising British university undergraduates and general adult samples, the scale has demonstrated exceptional psychometric properties, including high split-half reliability coefficients exceeding .90, test-retest reliability estimates ranging between .85 and .93, and robust concurrent and construct validity evidenced by significant correlations with denominational affiliation, frequency of church attendance, and philosophical orientations. This article provides a comprehensive evaluation of the historical development, theoretical foundations, psychometric architecture, validity evidence, and structural dimensions of the Religious Attitude Scale.

Keywords

Religious Attitude Scale, Poppleton and Pilkington, psychometrics, psychology of religion, Thurstone scaling, Likert scoring, religious orthodoxy, secularization, attitudes toward religion, university students

Authors

The Religious Attitude Scale was formulated and standardized by two prominent British researchers affiliated with the Department of Psychology at the University of Sheffield:

• Pamela K. Poppleton: Renowned British educational psychologist and researcher whose work focused extensively on educational attitudes, adolescent socialization, teacher professionalization, and psychometric assessment within secondary and higher education environments.
• G. W. Pilkington: Academic psychologist known for pioneering empirical inquiries into the psychology of religion, attitude change during higher education, and the longitudinal trajectory of belief structures among university student cohorts in the United Kingdom.

Institutional affiliations during development: Department of Psychology, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, United Kingdom.

Purpose

The primary purpose of the Religious Attitude Scale is the quantitative assessment of generalized favorable or unfavorable evaluative orientations toward Christian religion, doctrine, and institutional practice. During the early 1960s, empirical research in the psychology of religion was characterized by a relative scarcity of standardized, psychometrically rigorous instruments adapted to post-war European populations, as many existing inventories suffered from outdated linguistic conventions, severe sectarian bias, or unverified structural properties.

Poppleton and Pilkington designed the instrument to fulfill multiple research and operational needs:

• Longitudinal Tracking of Attitude Shifts: To accurately record and assess changes in religious commitments, skepticism, and moral perspectives as students progress through higher education degree courses.
• Comparative Psychometric Methodologies: To directly contrast the empirical utility, construct validity, and statistical reliability of Thurstone’s equal-appearing intervals technique against Likert’s summated ratings format using identical operational statements.
• Cross-Disciplinary Sociological Inquiries: To serve as a diagnostic and exploratory instrument investigating the interaction between religious sentiment and academic faculty (e.g., arts vs. physical sciences), gender differences, parental socialization, and political orientations.
• Secularization Dynamics: To measure nuanced responses to modern intellectual developments, such as the perceived epistemological conflict between natural science and biblical supernaturalism, without forcing respondents into simplistic dichotomies of belief versus unbelief.

The instrument provides researchers with a calibrated continuum capable of detecting fine-grained gradations ranging from devout, orthodox adherence through agnostic uncertainty to deliberate, naturalistic rejection of religious claims.

Psychological Construct

The psychological construct assessed by the Religious Attitude Scale is the multidimensional cognitive and affective disposition toward religion. In contemporary psychometric literature, an attitude is understood as a psychological tendency expressed by evaluating a particular entity with some degree of favor or disfavor. The RAS conceptualizes religious attitude not as a mere binary adherence to a creed, but as an integrated cognitive-evaluative network encompassing several primary dimensions:

1. Core Theistic and Theological Beliefs

This dimension taps into the respondent’s acceptance or rejection of central tenets of historic Christian theology. It includes convictions concerning the divine nature of Jesus Christ, the doctrine of redemption and atonement, life after death, and the metaphysical existence of an omnipotent Creator. Illustrative items include Item 9 (“Christ atoned for our sins by His sacrifice on the cross”) and Item 19 (“There is no survival of any kind after death”). Endorsement of these statements reflects deep metaphysical commitments regarding cosmic purpose and transcendence.

2. Moral and Existential Functionalism

This facet assesses the degree to which an individual views religion as an indispensable foundation for personal morality, societal cohesion, existential meaning, and subjective well-being. It examines whether individuals believe ethical behavior and meaningful living are contingent upon religious frameworks, or whether autonomous secular humanism is equally viable. Key statements include Item 1 (“To lead a good life it is necessary to have some religious belief”), Item 4 (“People without religious beliefs can lead just as moral and useful lives as people with religious beliefs”), and Item 11 (“Without belief in God life is meaningless”).

3. Epistemological and Scientific Tension

This dimension probes the perceived compatibility between scientific progress, critical rationalism, and religious orthodoxy. It addresses whether religious faith is viewed as an antiquated cognitive schema superseded by empirical inquiry or whether scientific discovery complements divine revelation. Examples include Item 5 (“Religious faith is merely another name for belief which is contrary to reason”), Item 10 (“The truth of the Bible diminishes with the advance of science”), and Item 12 (“The more scientific discoveries are made the more the glory of God is revealed”).

4. Institutional and Pedagogical Obligation

This component evaluates attitudes toward the institutionalized manifestations of faith, including church attendance, formal religious education, and parental transmission of religious doctrines to the next generation. Statements such as Item 13 (“Religious education is essential to preserve the morals of our society”), Item 17 (“I f you lead a good and decent life it is not necessary to go to church”), and Item 18 (“Parents have a duty to teach elementary Christian truths to their children”) measure support for religious socialization structures.

Theoretical Framework

The Religious Attitude Scale is grounded in classical attitude measurement paradigms, drawing primarily upon the psychophysical scaling theories developed by Louis Leon Thurstone and the subsequent psychometric refinements formalized by Rensis Likert.

Thurstone’s Law of Comparative Judgment posits that psychological stimuli (such as statements expressing attitudes toward social institutions) can be arranged along an objective psychological continuum. In the equal-appearing intervals methodology, a large pool of candidate statements is sorted by an independent panel of judges into distinct categories ranging from most favorable to least favorable, independent of their own personal convictions. The median position assigned to each item defines its scale value ($S$), while the interquartile range ($Q$) indicates its ambiguity. Items exhibiting high ambiguity (large $Q$ values) or irrelevance are systematically eliminated, leaving a finely graded sequence of unambiguous indicators across the entire continuum.

Poppleton and Pilkington incorporated this foundational theory while directly addressing its operational limitations. In classical Thurstone testing, respondents are instructed to endorse only those statements with which they completely agree, and their score is calculated as the median or mean scale value of the endorsed items. However, Likert subsequently demonstrated that summated rating scales—which require respondents to indicate their degree of agreement or disagreement along a response continuum—frequently produce superior internal consistency and variance extraction. Poppleton and Pilkington combined these traditions by providing calibrated Thurstone scale values for each statement while simultaneously capturing responses using a five-point Likert format, thereby enabling researchers to score the instrument through multiple psychometric paradigms.

Validity

The empirical validity of the Religious Attitude Scale has been extensively corroborated across diverse investigations spanning over four decades.

Construct and Criterion Validity

In the original standardization investigation by Poppleton and Pilkington (1963), the scale was administered to cohorts of undergraduate students across multiple academic faculties. The instrument exhibited powerful criterion-related validity when evaluated against external behavioral criteria:

• Institutional Engagement: Mean scale scores differed significantly ($p < .001$) across groups defined by their self-reported frequency of church attendance. Active churchgoers obtained substantially higher pro-religious scores than occasional attendees, who in turn scored markedly higher than non-attendees.
• Denominational Affiliation: Systematic gradations were observed among denominational subgroups; Roman Catholic and active evangelical Protestant students scored highest, followed by mainstream Anglican students, while those claiming no religious affiliation or identifying as secular humanists clustered at the opposing extreme of the continuum.

Convergent and Discriminant Validity

In their 1964 psychometric comparison, Poppleton and Pilkington demonstrated that whether scored using classical Thurstone scale values, simple Likert summation, or weighted item metrics, the scale correlated strongly ($r > .85$) across all scoring methodologies, confirming that the latent construct remained invariant across analytical approaches. Further longitudinal studies (Pilkington, Poppleton, & Robertshaw, 1965) demonstrated that the instrument was sensitive to developmental and ideological shifts occurring across undergraduate matriculation, showing predictable moderation effects among students enrolled in physical sciences compared to those in arts or social science programs.

Reliability

The Religious Attitude Scale demonstrates high reliability metrics across varied populations and administration conditions:

• Split-Half Reliability: In the original validation sample ($N = 403$), the split-half reliability coefficient, calculated by correlating odd and even items and correcting via the Spearman-Brown prophecy formula, reached $r = .94$ under Likert scoring and $r = .91$ under Thurstone scoring protocols.
• Internal Consistency: Subsequent recalculations using modern internal consistency formulas demonstrated Cronbach’s alpha coefficients consistently ranging between $\alpha = .90$ and $\alpha = .95$, indicating exceptional item homogeneity and shared variance across the 21 statements.
• Test-Retest Stability: Over intervals ranging from one month to three months among stable student cohorts, test-retest reliability coefficients were observed between $r_{tt} = .87$ and $r_{tt} = .93$, indicating robust temporal stability when measuring generalized ideological dispositions.

Factor Analysis

Although the Religious Attitude Scale was originally conceptualized as a unidimensional instrument measuring a general attitude along a pro-religious to anti-religious spectrum, empirical evaluations utilizing exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and subsequent structural analyses have revealed a clear primary general factor alongside identifiable subordinate components:

1. Primary Factor: General Religious Orthodoxy

Factor-analytic studies consistently demonstrate that a substantial portion of total variance (frequently exceeding 50% to 60%) is accounted for by an overarching first unrotated factor. Items with the highest factor loadings on this general dimension include:

• Item 9: “Christ atoned for our sins by His sacrifice on the cross” ($lambda > .80$)
• Item 14: “The proof that Christ was the Son of God lies in there cord of the Gospels” ($lambda > .75$)
• Item 11: “Without belief in God life is meaningless” ($lambda > .75$)
• Item 2: “Jesus Christ was an important and interesting historical figure, but in no way divine” (negative loading, $lambda < -.70$)

2. Secondary Factor: Scientific and Epistemic Rationalism

When rotated using oblique or varimax criteria, items addressing science and rationality cluster into a distinguishable secondary factor representing the intellectual tension between scientific epistemology and doctrinal belief. Key items loading on this dimension include Item 5 (“Religious faith is merely another name for belief which is contrary to reason”) and Item 10 (“The truth of the Bible diminishes with the advance of science”).

3. Model Fit and Structural Dimensions

Modern confirmatory factor analytic (CFA) investigations examining whether religious attitude inventories are strictly unidimensional or multidimensional support a bi-factor model: a dominant global “Religious Attitude” factor accounts for the shared variance among all 21 items, while distinct group factors reflect specific doctrinal, scientific, and behavioral sub-domains.

Instrument / Measurement Tool

• Test Type: Self-report psychological scale; dual-format equal-appearing interval (Thurstone) and summated rating (Likert).
• Format: Paper-and-pencil or computer-administered questionnaire.
• Number of Items: 21 items.
• Scale Values: Each statement is accompanied by an empirical Thurstone scale value ranging from 0.62 to 10.37, derived from equal-appearing interval calibration. Lower numbers indicate strong pro-religious endorsement; higher numbers indicate skepticism or rejection of traditional dogma.
• Response Options:
  • Strongly agree
  • Agree
  • Uncertain
  • Disagree
  • Strongly disagree
• Scoring Procedures:
  • Likert Method: Items indicating a favorable orientation toward religion (e.g., Items 1, 7, 9, 11, 12, 13, 14, 16, 18, 21) are scored 5 (Strongly agree) to 1 (Strongly disagree). Items indicating an unfavorable or skeptical orientation (e.g., Items 2, 4, 5, 6, 8, 10, 15, 17, 19, 20) are reverse-scored (1 = Strongly agree to 5 = Strongly disagree). Item 3 (“I genuinely do not know whether or not God exists”) is typically treated as an intermediate/neutral item or scored accordingly. Higher cumulative scores indicate a more favorable, traditional religious attitude.
  • Thurstone Median Method: If administered under original Thurstone criteria, respondents check only statements with which they agree, and the respondent’s overall score is the median or mean of the scale values of the endorsed statements.

Permissions & Fee and Test Year

The Religious Attitude Scale was originally published in 1963 by Pamela K. Poppleton and G. W. Pilkington in the British Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology. The scale was developed for academic, scientific, and non-commercial educational research purposes. Under fair-use conventions for scholarly instruments published in peer-reviewed scientific journals, the items may generally be utilized by academic researchers and clinicians without royalty fees, provided appropriate bibliographic citation is made to the authors and original publication sources. Researchers intending to adapt, commercialize, or digitize the scale within proprietary testing platforms should consult the copyright policies of the British Psychological Society and John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

References

• Pilkington, G. W., Poppleton, P. K., & Robertshaw, G. (1965). Changes in religious attitude and practices among students during university degree courses. British Journal of Educational Psychology, 35(2), 150–157. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.2044-8279.1965.tb01815.x
• Poppleton, P. K., & Pilkington, G. W. (1963). The measurement of religious attitudes in a university population. British Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 2(1), 20–36. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.2044-8260.1963.tb00371.x
• Poppleton, P. K., & Pilkington, G. W. (1964). A comparison of four methods of scoring an attitude scale in relation to its reliability and validity. British Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 3(1), 36–39. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.2044-8260.1964.tb00397.x
• Robinson, J. P., & Shaver, P. R. (1969). Measures of social psychological attitudes. Survey Research Center, Institute for Social Research, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan.
• Thurstone, L. L., & Chave, E. J. (1929). The measurement of attitude: A psychophysical method and some experiments with a scale for measuring attitude toward the church. University of Chicago Press.

Items of the Scale