Towards the development of an instrument to measure manifestative factors of religious motivation

This is a study towards the development of an instrument to be called the Religious Motivation Index (RMI), to measure ten manifestative factors of religious motivation for an apostolic vocation and to investigate whether there are differences in the ten factors among priests, theologians and philosophers. A total of 260 subjects: 60 priests, 100 theologians, and 100 philosophers, were randomly chosen to become the sample for this research investigation, from which the test was administered. The rating scale developed in the RMI is similar to the numerical rating scales used for assessing psychological factors. Each item in the questionnaire is fitted with a rating scale, which consists of four choice-categories placed on a bi-polar scale. The test items were first distinguished as a positive or a negative item in relation to a specific factor. The positive and negative signs were placed in front of each item in the scoring key and each was assigned scoring values. Following the technique of cumulated ratings, the algebraic summation of scorers of ten items covering a specific factor yielded the score for that factor. In this manner the constructed instrument (RMI) yielded ten scores for the ten factors and a total score for all the ten factors. It is in this way that all the questionnaires were scored and the scores for each of the ten factors and the total scores were recorded. Then, item analysis procedures were used to determine the power of discrimination of each item. The one-way Analysis of Variance (Anova test) was used to find out whether there was significant difference between the three groups. Finally, based on the significant F-ratio of the Anova test, a further HSD test was performed to investigate the significant difference between two groups on a specific factor