Towards further development of religious motivation questionnaire

• Main Author: Puthenangady, Antony, Fr.
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Animo Repository 1996
• Subjects: Religious motivation; Seminarians; Religious life; Tests and scales > Validity; Questionnaires; Psychometrics; Counseling; Educational Psychology
• Online Access: https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/etd_masteral/1750
• Institution: De La Salle University

This study is a further development of the Religious Motivation Questionnaire (RMQ) developed by Menguito (1991) based on a test made by Thornfield (n.d.).The study is descriptive in nature, conducted to describe the characteristics of an instrument for measuring religious motivations for religious/priestly life. The subjects were 205 seminarians of 13 seminaries from Manila, 203 women candidates from 14 religious formation houses of different congregations from Manila, and 55 ex-seminarians, studying or working in different institutions in Manila. The study consists of six phases:1. Field testing2. Investigation of validity of the Religious Motivation questionnaire3. Investigation of reliability4. Construction of norms5. Contrast group validation6. Refinement of the inventory with instruction, scoring and interpretation. The data gathered from the field testing were subjected to statistical analysis: Factor Analysis, Coefficient Alpha and one-way ANOVA. Through the Factor Analysis, it was found that all items loaded meaningfully on five factors. The factors were identified by studying their content as: F 1 Motive of Apostolic Work with 19 items F 2 Motive of Escapism of Sacrificial life in response to an inner call with 11 items F 4 Motive of Christian Perfection with 12 items F 5 Motive of Interpersonal Relationship with 10 items.In the statistical treatment with Coefficient Alpha, the item no. 69 which had a low reliability Coefficient was discarded. As a result the total number of items became 69, Factor 5 having 9 items. In order to establish the contrast group validation, one way ANOVA was conducted. T value was found. The result indicated that there was a significant difference (p0.05) in the level of motivation between the seminaries and ex-seminarians on F1, F3, F4, F5 which contained all positive items which indicated that the respondents who remained in religious or priestly formation were motivated and the ones who left the seminary were not motivated. There was no significant difference between seminarians and ex-seminarians on F2 which contained all negative items (motive of escapism from the world), which indicated that those who remained in formation made a conscious choice to follow Christ, knowing the cost of discipleship and those who left the seminary made the choice after much deliberations, being fully aware that they were not called for this way of life. So for both the groups it was not an attempt to escape the responsibilities of life. So there was no significant difference in Factor 2.Based on the score of 205 seminarians and 203 women candidates for religious life, norms were constructed in percentile rank for each factor and for the total score. The revised Religious Motivation Questionnaire is named Religious Motivation Review (RMR).The study concluded that: a) The Religious Motivation Review (RMR) is a valid and reliable test for religious and priestly candidates in the Philippines. b) RMR is an improvement on RMQ not only in terms of increased construct validation through factor analysis but also in terms of criterion-related validation using contrast group. c) In the light of the findings and conclusions, it was recommended that the Religious Motivation Review (RMR), be a part of the test battery in screening the candidates for priestly/religious life and also during various stages of formation.