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Abstract
The Quest and Intrinsic religious orientation scales have been used extensively in religious research. Batson (1976) has suggested that the scales measure complimentary orthogonal aspects of religious maturity, with the Quest scale measuring openmindedness and the Intrinsic scale measuring commitment; people who score high on both scales would be considered religiously mature. However, there is still considerable confusion about how to best characterize the variables that the scales are measuring. The orientations have been treated alternatively as cognitive styles, personality variables or types of religious motivation. Resolution of this issue would aid in interpreting discrepancies in existing research, as well as provide directions for future research using these scales or different measures that are more conceptually clear. This study is an attempt to evaluate one of those alternatives; are the Quest and Intrinsic scales measuring specifically religious dimensions, or special cases of more general personality dimensions? In order to address this question, religious and nonreligious versions of the scales were compared using simple correlations, discriminant analyses, and canonical correlations. As expected, the Quest scales functioned more similarly than the Intrinsic scales; while an openminded, doubting orientation may be a more general personality characteristic, commitment is probably more domain-specific. Additionally, the orthogonality of both sets of scales is questionable; the religious scales were only orthogonal with respect to a set of religious variables, and the nonreligious versions were only orthogonal with respect to a set of NEO-PI-R personality variables. Finally, given the relationships between the Nonreligious Intrinsic scale and other variables throughout the analyses, it may actually be a measure of religious maturity or maturity more generally, instead of a measure of commitment. The Nonreligious Intrinsic religiosity scale should be evaluated as a potential maturity/religious maturity measure in relation to existing measures of religious maturity, as well as with respect to additional religious and personality variables. In conclusion, while the dimensional framework of religiosity may be heuristically useful in interpreting discrepancies in previous research, a single measure of religious maturity will probably have more practical applicability in future religious research.
