Religious Index of Maturing Survey

Abstract

The Religious Index of Maturing Survey (RIMS) is an empirical psychometric instrument developed by Robert Marthai (1980) designed to operationalize and quantify the developmental trajectory of personal faith, religious self-concept, and subjective spiritual growth. Grounded in the developmental and humanistic psychology of religion, the RIMS conceptualizes religious maturity not as rigid adherence to orthodox dogma or institutional affiliation, but as an ongoing, phenomenological, and intrinsically motivated process of psychological integration, wholeness, cognitive-affective congruence, and behavioral transformation. Initially distilled from a 79-item pool derived from Walter Houston Clark’s foundational appraisal criteria and general theological-behavioral indices, the instrument was calibrated on 250 adult church members via principal axis factor analysis, yielding a robust unidimensional core of 19 scored items supplemented by 6 nonscored filler items to mitigate acquiescence response set (totaling 25 administered items). Responses are captured using a 5-point Likert scale anchored from “completely true” to “completely false.” Psychometric validation conducted with 216 adolescents in conservative academic environments established exceptional internal consistency (Cronbach’s alpha = .93) and stable 10-day test-retest reliability (r = .81). Construct validity is robustly demonstrated through significant positive associations with the Tennessee Self-Concept Scale total self-esteem (r = .39) and moral-ethical self-concept (r = .54), robust positive convergence with Allport and Ross’s intrinsic religious orientation (r = .79), and expected negative divergences from extrinsic religious orientation (r = -.31), state anxiety (r = -.22), and trait anxiety (r = -.21) on the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory. This article provides a comprehensive psychometric and theoretical review of the RIMS, detailing its theoretical heritage, structural properties, scoring methodology, research applications, and clinical implications.

Keywords

Religious Index of Maturing Survey, RIMS, religious maturity, psychology of religion, intrinsic religiosity, self-concept, spiritual development, psychometrics, faith maturity, ego identity

Authors

The Religious Index of Maturing Survey was developed by Robert Marthai, Ph.D., as part of his doctoral dissertation research in the Department of Psychology at the University of Southern Mississippi (Hattiesburg, Mississippi, United States). Marthai’s research focused on the synthesis of phenomenological psychology, personality theory, and psychometric measurement within the empirical study of religion and psychological maturation.

Purpose

The primary purpose of the Religious Index of Maturing Survey (RIMS) is to provide an objective, psychometrically sound, and phenomenologically sensitive measure of an individual’s ongoing religious and spiritual maturation. Historically, empirical research in the psychology of religion frequently conflated spiritual depth with either strict doctrinal orthodoxy, frequency of institutional participation (e.g., church attendance, frequency of prayer), or simplistic social conformity. Recognizing the fundamental limitations of these externalized metrics, Marthai designed the RIMS to assess the internal, experiential quality of an individual’s faith life—evaluating how deeply religious beliefs are integrated into personal self-identity, emotional equilibrium, existential meaning, and daily decision-making.

The instrument was specifically engineered to be generic rather than denominationally parochial. Although initially validated within Christian adolescent and adult populations, the operational syntax of the RIMS evaluates universal psychological processes—such as personal satisfaction, experiential wholeness, dynamic existential growth, intrinsic motivation, and ethical agency—rather than adherence to specific theological creeds. Consequently, the scale enables researchers and clinicians to measure religious maturity across diverse faith traditions and personal belief systems without imposing denominational prerequisites.

In research contexts, the RIMS serves as an essential empirical tool for investigating how spiritual maturity correlates with broader psychological constructs, including psychological well-being, ego identity development, coping mechanisms, existential anxiety, and prosocial behavior. In clinical, pastoral, and counseling environments, the measure functions as a diagnostic and evaluative inventory to identify spiritual struggles, religious scrupulosity versus healthy faith development, and the degree to which an individual’s spiritual worldview serves as an integrated source of psychological resilience versus neurotic conflict.

Psychological Construct

The construct assessed by the RIMS is religious maturity, defined as a dynamic, phenomenological process of personal growth characterized by the structural integration of spiritual beliefs into the core self-concept. Rather than viewing religious maturity as a static endpoint or a fixed inventory of moral competencies, Marthai operationalized the construct across thirteen intersecting phenomenological criteria:

• Phenomenal in Nature: Grounded in the subjective conscious experience and self-perception of the individual rather than third-party theological appraisal.
• Dynamic Process: An ongoing developmental trajectory rather than a static state or rigid set of objective milestones.
• Reality Based: Anchored in objective existential reality, fostering active engagement with life rather than escapist fantasy or defensive delusion.
• Intrinsically Motivated: Driven by an inherent personal valuation of spiritual truths, echoing Gordon Allport’s conception of religion as an ultimate end rather than an instrumental means.
• Religious Identity: Cultivation of a coherent sense of self within a religious framework, whether defined through an established religious organization or personal contemplation.
• Religious Self-Concept: High self-acceptance, moral self-worth, and inner congruence evaluated in the light of one’s spiritual values.
• Experiential Wholeness: An overarching sense of psychic integration, internal harmony, and systemic unity in living.
• Volitional Agency: Autonomous, intentional, and deliberate alignment of actions with spiritual principles, contrasting with unexamined social conditioning.
• Behavioral and Attitudinal Transformation: Observable evolution in daily conduct, interpersonal relationships, values, and ethical decision-making.
• Growth Toward Wholeness: Progressive movement toward more comprehensive, loving, and constructive behavioral repertoires.
• Existential Satisfaction: Profound personal contentment, joy, and peace derived from religious orientation.
• Developmental Interdependence: Organic connection to normative cognitive, emotional, and physical maturation across the lifespan.
• Unending Developmental Trajectory: A continual, lifelong openness to deeper truth, insight, and self-expansion.

Factor analysis demonstrates that these multifaceted theoretical dimensions converge onto a unified primary dimension centered on continuous personal growth, deep spiritual satisfaction, and positive behavioral transformation in and through one’s religious life.

Theoretical Framework

The conceptual infrastructure of the RIMS represents an integration of developmental psychology, humanistic personality theory, and empirical psychology of religion. Marthai drew heavily upon Erik Erikson’s psychosocial stage theory, specifically the construct of ego identity versus role confusion. In Eriksonian theory, a mature ego identity synthesizes personal values, ideological commitments, and historical continuity into a unified sense of self. Marthai extended this paradigm to argue that religious maturity is fundamentally an expression of mature ego identity within the spiritual domain, wherein religious commitments are neither foreclosed nor diffused, but autonomously achieved and deeply internalized.

A second foundational influence is the work of Walter Houston Clark (1970), whose classical treatise The Psychology of Religion outlined ten qualitative appraisal criteria for mature religion. Clark argued that mature religious faith is characterized by comprehensive cognitive understanding, an awareness of personal limitations, continuous moral effort, experiential depth, and an integrating dynamic that harmonizes conflicting psychological impulses. Marthai transformed Clark’s qualitative, philosophical criteria into an empirical psychometric format.

Furthermore, the RIMS integrates Gordon Allport’s seminal paradigm of religious orientation (Allport & Ross, 1967). Allport differentiated between extrinsic religiosity (using religion as a self-serving instrument for social status, comfort, or community approval) and intrinsic religiosity (living one’s religion as a master motive). Marthai’s model posits that true religious maturity is inherently intrinsic; mature believers internalize their spiritual principles to such an extent that faith informs every aspect of consciousness, volition, and interpersonal engagement.

Validity

The construct, convergent, and discriminant validity of the RIMS was systematically evaluated through multi-instrument psychometric batteries across diverse developmental samples:

Convergent Validity: Self-Concept Integration

To test Marthai’s core theoretical hypothesis that religious maturity is intimately tied to a positive, integrated self-concept, the RIMS was administered alongside the Tennessee Self-Concept Scale (TSCS; Fitts, 1965). The empirical findings yielded statistically significant positive correlations:

• TSCS Total Positive Score (Total-P): r = .39 (p < .01), confirming that overall positive self-esteem and general psychological self-regard co-vary substantially with mature religious development.
• TSCS Moral-Ethical Subscale: r = .54 (p < .01), demonstrating robust convergent validity regarding the specific moral-spiritual dimensions of self-identity and self-worth.

Criterion-Related and Construct Validity: Religious Orientations

The scale was evaluated against the Religious Orientation Scale (Allport & Ross, 1967) to determine whether the RIMS effectively captures mature intrinsic motivation while disconfirming utilitarian or extrinsic faith motives:

• Intrinsic Religious Orientation: r = .79 (p < .01), indicating strong convergence with internal, devotionally centered, and autonomous religious commitment.
• Extrinsic Religious Orientation: r = -.31 (p < .01), establishing discriminant validity by verifying that mature religion is inversely related to superficial, opportunistic, or status-driven religious expressions.

Discriminant and Clinical Validity: Anxiety and Psychic Wholeness

Marthai hypothesized that because religious maturity produces existential wholeness, internal coherence, and psychic integration, religiously mature individuals should experience significantly lower levels of psychological tension and anxiety. Testing this hypothesis using the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI; Spielberger et al., 1970) confirmed the expected negative relationships:

• State Anxiety (A-State): r = -.22 (p < .01).
• Trait Anxiety (A-Trait): r = -.21 (p < .01).

These findings substantiate the clinical relevance of the RIMS, demonstrating that higher scores on the instrument reflect emotional stability, decreased neurotic apprehension, and greater psychological resilience.

Reliability

The psychometric reliability of the RIMS has been demonstrated through empirical assessments of internal consistency and temporal stability:

Internal Consistency

In the primary standardization sample consisting of 216 adolescents from grades 8 through 12, the RIMS demonstrated an internal consistency coefficient (Cronbach’s alpha) of .93. This high degree of inter-item homogeneity directly reflects the rigorous factor-analytic item selection process employed during the scale’s initial construction, wherein only items with dominant factor loadings on the primary dimension of religious growth and satisfaction were retained.

Test-Retest Stability

Temporal stability was evaluated by administering the RIMS twice over a 10-day test-retest interval to a subsample of 33 students. The resulting test-retest reliability coefficient was r = .81. This indicates robust measurement stability over time while retaining sufficient sensitivity to track authentic developmental maturation across extended longitudinal periods.

Factor Analysis

The dimensional structure of the RIMS was established through comprehensive exploratory factor analysis during its initial validation phase:

Item Pool Reduction and Initial Calibration

Marthai originally constructed an experimental pool of 79 items based on Walter Houston Clark’s (1970) appraisal criteria, historical theological literature, and observable religious behaviors. This initial 79-item inventory was administered to an exploratory calibration sample of 250 adult members of Baptist churches located in and around the Grand Rapids, Michigan metropolitan area.

Factor Extraction and Structure

Principal axis factor analysis revealed a dominant primary factor accounting for the substantial majority of common variance across the instrument. Marthai characterized this central dimension as being “centered around the constructs of growth, satisfaction and positive behavioral change in and through one’s religion” (Marthai, 1980, p. 25). To produce a parsimonious, unified instrument, Marthai extracted the 19 items exhibiting the highest factor loadings on this primary axis.

Response Bias Control

Within the 19 core items, 5 were negatively worded to interrupt acquiescence response patterns. To further safeguard against systematic response biases, social desirability, and mechanical answering styles, 6 nonscored, negatively worded statement items were randomly interspersed throughout the instrument. This resulted in a final presentation format containing 25 items, maintaining high measurement fidelity while preserving the underlying unidimensional integrity of the 19 scored items.

Instrument / Measurement Tool

The practical administration, scoring conventions, and structural characteristics of the RIMS are detailed below:

• Test Type: Standardized self-report psychometric rating scale / paper-and-pencil inventory.
• Administration Format: Individual or group administration; self-administered.
• Target Population: Adolescents (grades 8–12) and adults across diverse religious and spiritual traditions.
• Administration Time: Approximately 10 to 15 minutes.
• Total Item Count: 25 items presented to respondents (19 scored items, 6 nonscored filler items).
• Response Format: 5-point Likert scale:
  • A = completely true
  • B = partly true
  • C = partly true and partly false
  • D = partly false
  • E = completely false
• Scoring Methodology:
  • Directly Scored Items: Items endorsed in the direction of maturity are scored: A = 5, B = 4, C = 3, D = 2, E = 1.
  • Reverse Scored Items: The 5 negatively worded scored items (e.g., Item 2, Item 4) are reversed prior to aggregation: A = 1, B = 2, C = 3, D = 4, E = 5.
  • Nonscored Items: The 6 filler items are omitted from the calculation of the final score.
  • Total Score Range: The cumulative RIMS score ranges from 19 to 95, with higher cumulative scores indicating advanced religious maturity, existential integration, and intrinsic spiritual growth.

Permissions & Fee and Test Year

The Religious Index of Maturing Survey was developed and validated in 1980 as part of Robert Marthai’s doctoral dissertation at the University of Southern Mississippi. The complete scale, administration guidelines, and psychometric indices are published in Dissertation Abstracts International (1980, Vol. 41, No. 05B, p. 1893). The instrument was placed in the public academic domain for non-commercial research, educational, and clinical evaluation purposes. No commercial fee is required to administer the scale for scholarly research, provided appropriate scholarly attribution and citation are maintained.

References

Allport, G. W., & Ross, J. M. (1967). Personal religious orientation and prejudice. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 5(4), 432–443. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0021212

Clark, W. H. (1970). The psychology of religion: An introduction to religious experience and behavior. Macmillan.

Fitts, W. H. (1965). Tennessee Self Concept Scale: Manual. Western Psychological Services.

Marthai, R. (1980). Construction and validation of a measure of phenomenal process and religious maturity (Doctoral dissertation, University of Southern Mississippi). Dissertation Abstracts International, 41(05B), 1893.

Spielberger, C. D., Gorsuch, R. L., & Lushene, R. E. (1970). Manual for the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory. Consulting Psychologists Press.

Items of the Scale