Salvation Opinionnaire Scale

1. Abstract

The Salvation Opinionnaire Scale (SO) is an empirical psychometric instrument designed to assess individual differences in theological attitudes, specifically along the ideological continuum of religious conservatism, religious liberalism, and religious radicalism within the Christian tradition (Dreger & Adkins, 1991). Originally conceived by L. V. Wendland in 1949 at the University of Southern California and substantially refined, validated, and psychometrically standardized across several decades by Ralph Mason Dreger (1952, 1991) and Shan A. Adkins (1991), the instrument uses a specific theological focal point—the doctrine and personal definition of "salvation"—as a proxy for overarching religious orientation. The inventory comprises 25 items presented in a forced-choice endorsement format based on the classical Thurstone method of equal-appearing intervals. Rather than treating religious sentiment as an undifferentiated general construct, the scale taps into distinct theological and psychological orientations. Factor-analytic investigations by Dreger (1991) on a standardization cohort of 778 subjects revealed a robust four-factor latent structure: Factor I (Conservative / Orthodox Salvation), Factor II (Liberal: Integration and Growth), Factor III (Liberal: Freeing Oneself from Insincerity and Conflict), and Factor IV (Radical / Institutional Critique). Psychometrically, the instrument demonstrates substantial known-groups validity, successfully distinguishing theological conservatives from theological liberals (t = 27.33, p < .001), and manifests high convergent validity with established measures of religiosity such as the Ferguson Primary Social Attitudes Scale No. 1 (r = .77, p < .01). While classical internal consistency metrics such as Cronbach’s alpha were omitted in early Thurstone-scaling traditions, the instrument remains a historically pivotal psychometric tool in the psychology of religion, offering nuanced insights into cognitive and affective dimensions of soteriological belief systems.

2. Keywords

Salvation Opinionnaire Scale, religious conservatism, religious liberalism, religious radicalism, Thurstone scaling, psychology of religion, Christian theology, soteriology, attitude measurement, psychometrics, factor analysis

3. Authors

The foundational development and subsequent psychometric standardizations of the Salvation Opinionnaire Scale are credited to the following researchers:

• Leonard V. Wendland, Ph.D.: Graduate School of Religion, University of Southern California (Original unpublished manuscript and foundational item pool, 1949).
• Ralph Mason Dreger, Ph.D. (1914–2005): Emeritus Professor of Psychology, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, Louisiana; previously at Florida State University. Dreger spearheaded the initial standardization, clinical personality investigations, latent structure analyses, and restandardization (Dreger, 1952, 1991).
• Shan A. Adkins, M.A.: Department of Psychology, Louisiana State University (Co-investigator in the 1991 normative restandardization and scaling recalibration).

4. Purpose

The fundamental purpose of the Salvation Opinionnaire Scale is to measure an individual’s operational theology regarding the nature, mechanism, and psychological function of salvation within the broader context of Western Christian thought. In the empirical study of religious ideation, assessing religious ideology presents substantial psychometric hurdles: broad self-identification labels (such as "Christian," "liberal," or "conservative") frequently obscure deep intra-individual differences in cognitive complexity, dogmatism, emotional reliance, and social attitudes. By focusing precisely on soteriology—the theological doctrine of salvation—the Salvation Opinionnaire provides a targeted operational lens through which broad religious worldviews can be quantitatively placed along an ideological continuum spanning orthodox conservatism, humanistic liberalism, and critical radicalism (Dreger & Adkins, 1991).

The scale was developed to meet both basic research and applied clinical needs in psychological assessment. In academic and empirical research, the instrument provides social psychologists, sociologists of religion, and psychometricians with an objective method to quantify theological orientation without relying solely on superficial denominational affiliation. Denominational labels are frequently heterogenous; congregants within mainline or evangelical denominations display wide variance in belief structures. The SO allows researchers to assess whether individual soteriological stances predict external psychological correlates, such as social authoritarianism, cognitive rigidity, emotional well-being, or ethnocentrism.

In applied and clinical contexts, the Salvation Opinionnaire serves as an assessment tool for examining religious coping mechanisms, intrapsychic conflict, and personality dynamics. As demonstrated in Dreger’s early clinical research (1952) using projective techniques and personality inventories, theological stances are frequently intertwined with underlying psychological needs. For instance, an individual who endorses items framing salvation as "saving myself from myself, eliminating the conflict in my personality" may be utilizing theological constructs as a coping strategy for neurotic anxiety, guilt, or identity fragmentation. Conversely, individuals endorsing radical items that characterize salvation as "a promise that the church makes to people to keep them under its thumb" may manifest institutional distrust or counter-dependent personality traits. Consequently, the instrument offers clinicians working with religiously integrated clients a standardized method to map how theological concepts function as personal defense mechanisms, sources of self-actualization, or focal points of spiritual distress.

5. Psychological Construct

The psychological construct evaluated by the Salvation Opinionnaire Scale is multidimensional theological ideology, indexed specifically through cognitive endorsements of the meaning of salvation. Rather than treating religious belief as a monolithic trait of "religiosity," the SO conceptualizes soteriological perspective as a continuous psychological landscape comprising four underlying latent dimensions identified by Dreger (1991):

Factor I: Conservative / Orthodox Soteriology

This dimension represents classical, orthodox Christian theology grounded in foundational doctrines of substitutionary atonement, original sin, supernatural grace, and eschatological promise. Within this cognitive schema, salvation is viewed as an external, divinely initiated transaction mediated exclusively through the person and sacrifice of Jesus Christ. The psychological orientation of this dimension centers on deliverance from guilt, moral culpability, and eternal judgment, replaced by feelings of peace, spiritual rebirth, and divine alignment. Example items capturing this construct include:

• "Salvation is being saved from sin by the blood of Christ on the cross." (Item 5)
• "Salvation is accepting Christ as Savior and putting one’s entire trust and faith in Him as a living Savior." (Item 7)
• "Salvation is to be saved from eternal condemnation unto eternal life and an eternal home in heaven with God." (Item 14)

Psychologically, high scores on this dimension reflect an external locus of spiritual control, adherence to traditional dogmatic authority, and reliance on extrinsic religious structures to manage existential dread and moral transgression.

Factor II: Liberal: Integration and Growth

This subconstruct reflects a modernized, humanistic, and developmentally oriented understanding of religion. Departing from traditional concepts of blood atonement and divine wrath, this dimension reconceptualizes salvation as a holistic process of self-actualization, character development, and psychological maturation. Salvation is translated into teleological growth toward higher personal and social values, emphasizing psychological harmony and ontological expansion. Representative items include:

• "Salvation is a state of spiritual integration." (Item 6)
• "Salvation is integration of my life around constantly progressive meanings and values." (Item 9)
• "Salvation is character development." (Item 15)
• "Salvation is growth toward ultimate reality." (Item 22)

From a psychological standpoint, this construct aligns with humanistic psychology and progressive religious philosophies, wherein spiritual terminology serves as an idiom for personality integration, personal agency, and self-realization.

Factor III: Liberal: Freeing Oneself from Insincerity and Conflict

Factor III delineates an intrapsychic, therapeutic interpretation of religious experience. Here, salvation is framed primarily as an internal psychological resolution of neurotic distress, cognitive dissonance, feelings of inadequacy, and inner dividedness. The divine agency is largely interiorized or replaced with autonomous self-regulation. Representative scale statements include:

• "Salvation means saving myself from myself, eliminating the conflict in my personality." (Item 2)
• "Salvation means to save yourself from yourself." (Item 8)
• "Salvation is to be relieved from feelings of insincerity, self-pity, inadequacy." (Item 21)

Individuals endorsing this dimension utilize religious ideation as a cognitive restructuring framework to resolve low self-esteem, self-alienation, and interpersonal friction, conceptualizing salvation as liberation from ego dystonia.

Factor IV: Radical / Institutional Critique

The fourth dimension captures religious radicalism, theological skepticism, and critical deconstruction of ecclesiastical authority. Rooted in both sociopolitical critique and intellectual detachment, this perspective regards traditional soteriological claims either as manipulative institutional mechanisms designed for social control or as outdated emotionalism characteristic of unsophisticated revivalism. Representative statements include:

• "Salvation is a very ambiguous term used by orthodox groups indicating when a person is saved." (Item 1)
• "Salvation makes me think of a Southern Revival meeting and uncontrolled emotions." (Item 4)
• "Salvation is a promise that the church makes to people to keep them under its thumb." (Item 10)
• "Salvation is the freedom from neurotic conflict and harmonious living." (Item 24)

High endorsement of these items signals critical detachment, cognitive independence, rejection of dogmatic orthodoxy, and an inclination toward demythologization.

6. Theoretical Framework

The theoretical framework underpinning the Salvation Opinionnaire Scale draws from psychometric attitude theory, mid-twentieth-century psychology of religion, and modern theological classifications. Psychometrically, the instrument is grounded directly in the attitude measurement paradigms pioneered by Louis Leon Thurstone and E. J. Chave (1929). Thurstone’s Law of Categorical Judgment and the method of equal-appearing intervals assert that social and religious attitudes can be measured along an objective mathematical psychological continuum. In this framework, an attitude represents the degree of positive or negative affect, or degree of agreement, associated with an ideological stimulus. Rather than assuming monotonic linear response properties across every item (as in modern Likert scales), Thurstone scaling assigns each scale item an empirical scale value (median weight) determined by expert judges. An individual’s psychological position along the continuum is determined by the specific cluster of items they endorse, reflecting items that match their personal cognitive and affective threshold.

Theologically, the scale is framed within the historic tensions of early-to-mid 20th-century Protestant thought, specifically the Fundamentalist–Modernist Controversy. Theorists such as Paul Tillich and H. Richard Niebuhr documented how traditional orthodox doctrines were systematically reinterpreted by liberal Christian thinkers into existential, psychological, and ethical principles. In classical fundamentalism/orthodoxy, salvation is an objective, supernatural rescue from cosmic damnation and guilt through Christ’s penal substitution. In theological liberalism, salvation becomes a subjective, immanent process of moral progress, ethical engagement, and personality maturation. In theological radicalism or secular humanism, traditional religious concepts are either discarded as authoritarian defense mechanisms or completely demythologized into secular social ethics. The SO operationalizes these exact ideological transitions into discrete psychometric indicators.

From a personality psychology perspective, the scale aligns with the functional theories of religion advanced by Gordon Allport (1950). Allport distinguished between mature and immature religious sentiments. Immature religion is characterized by magical thinking, institutional dependency, guilt alleviation, and rigid dogmatism, closely paralleling the Conservative and Guilt-Relief dimensions of the SO. Mature religion, by contrast, is characterized by open-ended searching, progressive values, dynamic cognitive integration, and self-critical awareness, mirrored closely in the Liberal Integration and Radical dimensions. Thus, the SO operates at the theoretical intersection where psychological defenses, existential striving, and doctrinal propositions converge.

7. Validity

The construct, criterion, and convergent validity of the Salvation Opinionnaire Scale have been established across several empirical investigations spanning several decades:

Known-Groups Validity

The primary evidence for construct and criterion-related validity was demonstrated by Dreger (1952) using a known-groups validation paradigm. Dreger administered comprehensive psychological batteries, projective tests, and the SO to a sample of participants categorized into distinct theological cohorts based on established denominational affiliations known to represent theological liberalism versus theological conservatism. The results revealed an exceptionally large and statistically significant difference between the two groups: conservative respondents demonstrated a mean score of M = 7.84, whereas liberal respondents scored a mean of M = 4.00. This yielded an independent samples t-test value of t = 27.33 (p < .001), indicating that the scale possesses profound discriminatory power in differentiating individuals holding traditional orthodox views from those holding modernist liberal views.

Convergent and Concurrent Validity

Convergent validity was examined by evaluating the SO against external psychometric measures of religious attitudes. Dreger (1952) correlated SO scores with the well-established Primary Social Attitudes Scale No. 1: Religionism, developed by Ferguson (1941). The resulting bivariate correlation was exceptionally high, r(28) = .77 (p < .01), demonstrating that the SO captures the core psychological variance associated with broader institutional religionism and theological adherence.

Furthermore, in the 1991 normative restandardization by Dreger and Adkins involving 778 subjects, external validity was assessed by ranking religious denominations along an independent continuum of theological conservatism to liberalism. When denominational categories were correlated against participants’ continuous SO scores, a significant correlation of r = .26 (p < .0001) was observed. Given the considerable ideological heterogeneity present within modern American denominations, this statistically robust association provides strong criterion-related support for the scale’s sensitivity to denominational divergence.

Discriminant and Divergent Findings

An intriguing psychometric finding emerged regarding subjective self-identification. As part of the SO protocol, respondents are asked to rate themselves directly along a continuous visual analog line anchoring "Religious Liberal" at one end and "Religious Conservative" at the other. Dreger and Adkins (1991) reported that respondents’ subjective self-ratings were essentially uncorrelated with their objective SO scores (r = .04, p < .22). This non-significant finding replicated identical patterns observed in Dreger’s (1952) initial investigations. Rather than indicating scale invalidity, psychometricians interpret this divergence as evidence of the failure of lay self-reports: individuals often label themselves "conservative" or "liberal" based on cultural or political identity without realizing that their underlying theological assumptions about salvation diverge sharply from those formal labels. The SO therefore demonstrates incremental validity over single-item self-report measures of religious ideology.

8. Reliability

A critical examination of the published psychometric literature surrounding the Salvation Opinionnaire reveals unique historical and methodological considerations regarding reliability reporting:

Across the published empirical investigations by Wendland (1949), Dreger (1952, 1991), and Dreger and Adkins (1991), formal internal consistency coefficients—such as Cronbach’s alpha or Kuder-Richardson Formula 20 (KR-20)—were not reported. This omission is rooted primarily in the classical test theory traditions of Thurstone scaling prevailing during the instrument’s inception. Thurstone equal-appearing interval scales were structurally designed under the assumption of non-monotonic item response curves: an individual agrees only with statements that directly align with their specific attitude point and rejects both statements that fall "below" and "above" their position. Consequently, traditional internal consistency formulas that assume monotonic accumulation across all items (such as those applied to Likert scales) are mathematically ill-suited and yield artificially depressed reliability estimates when applied indiscriminately to raw Thurstone checklists.

In the 1991 latent structure reanalysis, Dreger utilized an odd-even split-half cross-validation methodology across the 778 respondents to evaluate the stability of the correlation matrix and factor solutions. The factor configurations remained remarkably stable across odd and even sub-samples, indicating high structural replicability and sampling stability. Nonetheless, as psychometric reviewers have noted, the lack of modern test-retest reliability statistics and dimension-specific composite reliability coefficients represents a clear limitation of the instrument in contemporary assessment contexts. Furthermore, because Dreger’s (1991) factor analyses proved that the 25 items do not form a unidimensional continuum but rather tap into four distinct latent factors, calculating a single composite reliability score across all 25 items would be psychometrically invalid. Contemporary psychometricians recommend that future administrations compute separate ordinal alpha or omega coefficients for each of the four individual factor subscales.

9. Factor Analysis

The structural dimensionality of the Salvation Opinionnaire Scale was systematically investigated by Dreger (1991) using advanced multivariate procedures to resolve long-standing questions regarding whether theological attitudes can genuinely be represented on a unidimensional continuum. The analysis was conducted on the comprehensive normative restandardization sample comprising N = 778 subjects (including 485 high school, undergraduate, and graduate students, alongside 293 adult members of churches and church school classes in two southern metropolitan areas).

Dreger applied both exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) techniques across the full dataset as well as across independent split-half validation subsamples (odd-even halves). The mathematical factor extraction clearly rejected a unidimensional model, identifying a four-factor orthogonal/oblique latent solution that accounted for the underlying item intercorrelations:

The identification of these four latent factors demonstrated that religious liberalism is not merely the mathematical inverse of religious conservatism. Rather, liberalism splits into two psychologically distinct components: one focused on positive psychological and spiritual self-actualization (Factor II), and another focused on self-saving relief from intrapsychic neurotic distress (Factor III). Furthermore, religious radicalism (Factor IV) emerged as an independent cognitive posture characterized by institutional critique rather than simple low orthodoxy. Despite establishing this refined four-factor structure, Dreger (1991) did not publish standardized subscale scoring weights for the individual factors, maintaining the historical Thurstone composite scoring as the standard procedure while acknowledging the psychometric tension between the unidimensional scoring method and the multidimensional reality of the construct.

10. Instrument / Measurement Tool

The technical characteristics, administrative parameters, and scoring protocols of the Salvation Opinionnaire are structured as follows:

• Instrument Name: Salvation Opinionnaire Scale (SO).
• Test Type: Standardized self-report attitude questionnaire / opinionnaire.
• Target Population: Adolescents and adults within or familiar with the Judeo-Christian religious tradition; validated on high school students, university undergraduates, graduate students, church professionals, seminarians, and lay church congregants.
• Administration Format: Individual or group administration; paper-and-pencil checklist or computer-administered questionnaire.
• Estimated Completion Time: 5 to 10 minutes.
• Item Count: 25 core items plus 1 supplementary visual analog self-placement rating line.
• Response Format: Forced-choice checklist format. Respondents are instructed to place an "X" next to any statement that accurately describes their understanding and personal attitude toward "salvation," and leave all non-endorsed statements completely blank.
• Scoring Architecture:
  • Classical Thurstone Method: Each of the 25 items possesses an empirically assigned scale weight derived from median judge ratings on a 1 (conservative) to 7 (liberal) equal-appearing interval continuum (Dreger & Adkins, 1991). The respondent’s raw score is computed by summing (or calculating the median of) the scale weights of all endorsed items. This raw score is subsequently converted into a standardized percentile score based on normative tables.
  • Automated Implementation: Although calculating hand percentiles can be labor-intensive, deriving raw scores is easily automated in standard statistical packages (e.g., R, SPSS, Python) by computing conditional sums based on endorsed binary indicators.
  • Dimensional Profiling: For research applications investigating latent structures, researchers can compute separate factor scores by summing endorsements within each of the four empirically validated factor clusters (Conservative, Liberal Growth, Liberal Conflict Relief, Radical).

11. Permissions & Fee and Test Year

The timeline of publication and copyright considerations for the Salvation Opinionnaire Scale are outlined below:

• Foundational Inception: 1949, developed by Leonard V. Wendland in an unpublished doctoral dissertation/manuscript at the Graduate School of Religion, University of Southern California.
• First Empirical Validation: 1952, published by Ralph Mason Dreger in Psychological Monographs: General and Applied (American Psychological Association).
• Normative Restandardization: 1991, published by Ralph Mason Dreger and Shan A. Adkins in the International Journal for the Psychology of Religion (Lawrence Erlbaum Associates / Taylor & Francis).
• Latent Structure Publication: 1991, published by Ralph Mason Dreger in Educational and Psychological Measurement (SAGE Publications).
• Permissions and Academic Use: The complete 25-item scale and scoring parameters were published in full within academic journal literature for scientific dissemination (Dreger & Adkins, 1991). The scale is widely considered accessible for non-commercial academic, scientific, and educational research purposes under fair-use principles, provided appropriate bibliographic attribution is given. No separate commercial testing fee or certification is required to administer the instrument in non-profit psychological research. Researchers planning commercial integration or digital assessment platform deployments should seek formal copyright clarification from the journal publishers (Taylor & Francis / SAGE).

12. References

The following academic sources document the development, validation, and psychometric history of the Salvation Opinionnaire Scale:

• Allport, G. W. (1950). The individual and his religion: A psychological interpretation. Macmillan.
• Dreger, R. M. (1952). Some personality correlates of religious attitudes, as determined by projective techniques. Psychological Monographs: General and Applied, 66(3), 1–18 (Whole No. 335). https://doi.org/10.1037/h0093630
• Dreger, R. M. (1991). The latent structure of the Salvation Opinionnaire, a measure of religious attitudes in the American Christian tradition. Educational and Psychological Measurement, 51(3), 707–719. https://doi.org/10.1177/0013164491513018
• Dreger, R. M., & Adkins, S. A. (1991). A restandardization of a brief scale of religious orthodoxy, religious humanism, and religious radicalism. The International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, 1(3), 173–181. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15327582ijpr0103_4
• Ferguson, L. W. (1941). The stability of the primary social attitudes: I. Religionism and II. Humanitarianism. The Journal of Psychology, 12(2), 283–288. https://doi.org/10.1080/00223980.1941.9917072
• 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.
• Wendland, L. V. (1949). The Salvation Opinionnaire (Unpublished manuscript). Graduate School of Religion, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA.

13. Items of the Scale