The Latent Structure of the Salvation Opinionnaire, a Measure of Religious Attitudes in the American Christian Tradition

Abstract

Data gathered on the Salvation Opinionnaire, a 25-item religious attitude questionnaire, from 778 individuals representing a broad spectrum of religious attitudes was analyzed by the structural equations program, LISREL 7, to determine the instrument's latent structure. By exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses a predicted four-factor structure was demonstrated. The data were divided into odd and even cases of 389 apiece and confirmatory analyses carried out, again with confirmation of a four-factor structure in each case. Comparisons of the two sets of structures of the odd and even cases achieved a high degree of comparability with the use of the Ahmavaara transformation and the congruence coefficient, but testing equality by means of LISREL proved impossible on account of lack of positive definiteness of one covariance matrix. Some (logical) parallels were found between the dimensions of the Salvation Opinionnaire and the dimensions of others' instruments.