Measuring religion as end, means, and quest: The religious life and orientation scale

We propose a short and reliable instrument, based on pre-existing items, for measuring the three dimensions of religion as end, means, and quest. Starting from the 47 items originally included in the Religious Orientation Scale (ROS; Allport & Ross, 1967) and in the Religious Life Inventory (RLI; Batson, Schoenrade, & Ventis, 1993), we performed four steps of analyses involving three independent samples of Italian Catholic respondents (total N = 1194). Through a process of progressive refinement, using exploratory factor analyses, an investigation of the meaning of the items, and confirmatory factor analyses, we eventually selected 18 items from the pre-existing scales, recombined in the Religious Life and Orientation Scale. We report initial evidence of the psychometric qualities of the proposed instrument and analyze its correspondence with the parent scales. Future research should investigate the properties of the scale with respondents from other countries and belonging to other religions.