Assessing religious life affirmation of the dominican family in the Philippines

• Main Author: Tolentino, Mary Serafica M., OP
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Animo Repository 1998
• Subjects: Religious life; Dominicans; Monasticism and religious orders; Examinations > Validity; Religion
• Online Access: https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/etd_doctoral/824
• Institution: De La Salle University

This study involves the development of an instrument to measure religious life affirmation (RLA) as an organizational construct of the Dominican family.Initial assessment was done during the concept generation through interview and survey of the 42 male and female Dominicans. Recognition, acceptance and appreciation by God, self and others were identified as the basic concepts and main sources of RLA, respectively. Its cultural sub-constructs comprised the religious life values (ERLV), the religious family values (RFV) and the religious personal values (PRV). The behavioral indicators of affirmed Dominicans included high self-esteem, stable community life, and firm spirituality. To determine the content validity, 20 non-Dominican and Dominican experts in psychology, counseling, or religious formation reviewed the original 205 items for their relevance, clarity, and appropriateness in the inventory. With 80 percent agreement, they discarded 105 items. The remaining 100 items were pretested to 16 Dominicans, then field tested to 344 currently professed Dominicans (CPD) and to 26 former professed Dominicans (FPD). All the respondents were purposively chosen. The use of the contrasted groups based on their perseverance in the religious life and the factor analysis determined the construct validity. Item analysis was conducted on the remaining 73 items. The reliability was established through inter-item consistency. The final form of the Religious Life Affirmation Inventory (RLAI) consisted of 70 items distributed among the three factors: Challenges (r=0.946 with 34 items), Support System (r=0.946 with 25 items), Spirituality (r=0.888 with 11 items). Norms were constructed using percentile ranks and stanine. These were immediately applied in the quantitative evaluation of respondents' RLA utilizing the total raw scores in each item, each factor, and in the whole inventory. Using coded letters, the 344 CPD and the 26 FPD were grouped according to congregation, sex, community size, location of formation house, and perseverance in religious life. In all variables, CPD evidenced the average level of RLA. FPD who departed from the religious life were confirmed to be unaffirmed religious. This consequent assessment demonstrated the validity and reliability of the inventory as a measuring tool for RLA.