Attitudes toward the LDS Church Scale

Abstract

The Attitudes toward the LDS Church Scale is a specialized psychometric instrument developed by Kenneth R. Hardy in 1949 at the University of Utah to assess the attitudes, theological orthodoxy, and institutional sentiments of members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (commonly designated as the LDS Church). Grounded in the equal-appearing intervals psychophysical scaling tradition pioneered by Louis Leon Thurstone, the scale evaluates a broad spectrum of religious affect and doctrinal adherence. The instrument comprises two distinct sections: Section I consists of 25 multiple-choice items, each presenting five calibrated statements from which respondents select the single statement that most accurately characterizes their personal perspective; Section II comprises 50 independent, single-statement items where respondents endorse any statement aligning with their subjective beliefs. Every statement within the 75-item inventory carries an empirically derived scale value spanning from 1.0 (indicating an exceptionally favorable, orthodox attitude) to 11.0 (reflecting a deeply unfavorable, unorthodox attitude). Overall scores are computed as the arithmetic mean of all endorsed statement scale values, yielding a continuum from complete orthodoxy (scores 1.0–2.5) to nominal or alienated affiliation (scores 6.0 and above). The scale was standardized utilizing 80 judges to calibrate 307 initial statements, and validated across a community sample of 162 adult LDS adherents. Psychometric evaluation demonstrated robust internal consistency, yielding a Spearman-Brown corrected split-half reliability coefficient of .95. Criterion-related validity was substantiated through a significant non-linear correlation of .79 between scale scores and a composite behavioral criterion measuring seven institutional behavioral standards, including church attendance, tithing compliance, leadership activity, personal prayer, and adherence to dietary health codes (Word of Wisdom). This article provides a comprehensive academic analysis of the scale’s theoretical foundations, structural composition, psychometric properties, scoring paradigms, and research utility.

Keywords

Attitudes toward the LDS Church Scale, Thurstone scaling, religious orthodoxy, Mormon studies, sociology of religion, psychology of religion, attitude measurement, equal-appearing intervals, Kenneth R. Hardy, religiosity assessment

Authors

The scale was conceptualized, constructed, and empirically validated by Kenneth R. Hardy as part of his graduate research at the Department of Psychology, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah, culminating in his 1949 master’s thesis entitled Construction and Validation of a Scale Measuring Attitudes Toward the LDS Church. Hardy subsequently completed doctoral work and contributed extensively to social psychology, developmental psychology, and the study of institutional culture, achievement motivation, and social behavior.

Purpose

The primary purpose of the Attitudes toward the LDS Church Scale is the objective, quantitative assessment of religious sentiment, doctrinal adherence, and institutional commitment among adherents of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. In the mid-twentieth century, the empirical study of religion faced significant methodological limitations due to the prevalence of unstandardized, single-item self-report queries or generalized church-attitude measures that failed to capture the highly idiosyncratic theological tenets, institutional obligations, and unique cultural fabric of specific religious traditions. Hardy (1949) developed this instrument to bridge the gap between general psychometric attitude theory and the specific institutional dynamics of the LDS community.

From an applied research perspective, the instrument fulfills several critical research and evaluative functions:

• Sociological and Demographic Inquiries: It facilitates the investigation of how religious commitment varies across generational cohorts, educational strata, socioeconomic backgrounds, gender roles, and geographical locations (e.g., the Intermountain West versus global diaspora communities).
• Longitudinal Studies of Faith Development: The scale enables researchers to track shifts in personal religious belief across key developmental milestones, such as late adolescence, collegiate transition, full-time proselytizing missions, marriage, and middle adulthood.
• Social and Behavioral Psychology Investigations: It serves as a validated independent or dependent measure in examining the interface between religious orthodoxy and socio-political attitudes, prosocial behavior, psychological well-being, internal locus of control, and authoritarianism.
• Institutional Program Evaluation: The scale incorporates items assessing specific institutional auxiliaries—such as the Mutual Improvement Association (MIA), the Relief Society, and the global missionary program—allowing institutional analysts to quantify member satisfaction and perceived auxiliary efficacy.

The theoretical rationale rests on the assumption that an individual’s psychological orientation toward their religious community is multifaceted, encompassing private mystical beliefs, adherence to public ethical imperatives, conformity to unique communal rituals, and emotional resonance with ecclesiastical authority. By calibrating statements that span the entire evaluative spectrum—from fervent devotion to explicit cynicism—the instrument provides an objective metric that differentiates between absolute orthodoxy, nuanced devotion, institutional skepticism, and nominal disaffiliation.

Psychological Construct

The Attitudes toward the LDS Church Scale operationalizes the construct of attitudinal favorability and theological orthodoxy toward the LDS Church. Within contemporary psychology of religion, this construct represents a complex cognitive-affective-behavioral orientation toward a distinct ecclesiastical system. Hardy structured the instrument around four underlying content domains:

1. Core Christian and General Theistic Beliefs (7 items)

This dimension evaluates the transcendent, foundational beliefs shared across the broader Christian tradition. Items in this category assess an individual’s personal conviction regarding the existence and nature of God, the historical and cosmic divinity of Jesus Christ, the objective reality of personal immortality and bodily resurrection, and the metaphysical efficacy of personal prayer. These items establish whether an individual’s religious sentiment is rooted in foundational theism or detached from supernatural metaphysics.

2. Specific LDS Theological Dogma (12 items)

This sub-domain measures adherence to the distinct theological, revelatory, and eschatological claims unique to Latter-day Saint restorationist doctrine. It includes items probing the prophetic calling and visions of Joseph Smith, the reality of the premortal existence of human spirits (preexistence), the unique LDS conceptualization of the Plan of Salvation, continuing revelation through living General Authorities, and the theological significance of temple ordinances, including eternal marriage and vicarious work for the dead. Sample items reflect attitudes toward the divine authority of church leaders and the doctrinal necessity of temple sealings.

3. Church Ecclesiastical Practices and Institutional Auxiliaries (21 items)

This dimension transitions from theoretical doctrine to active behavioral and organizational commitment. It evaluates attitudes toward concrete church programs and ethical proscriptions, including adherence to the health code known as the Word of Wisdom (abstinence from alcohol, tobacco, coffee, and tea), the payment of a full monetary tithing, full-time missionary service, church meeting attendance, and organizational auxiliaries such as the Relief Society and the historic Young Men’s and Young Women’s Mutual Improvement Association (MIA). Furthermore, historical items in this section addressed mid-twentieth-century policies regarding priesthood ordination policies.

4. Institutional Impact on Personal and Community Life

The remaining items probe broad, evaluative assessments concerning the social utility, psychological impact, and cultural influence of the church. Respondents express their perspective on whether church membership fosters healthy personality development or induces neurotic guilt; whether LDS teachings enhance life enjoyment or constrain personal freedom; whether church members constitute superior or inferior neighbors; and whether the institutional administration utilizes ecclesiastical funds and energy wisely or wastefully.

Theoretical Framework

The Attitudes toward the LDS Church Scale is rooted in classical attitude measurement theory, specifically the psychophysical model of Equal-Appearing Intervals conceptualized by L. L. Thurstone and E. J. Chave (1929). Thurstone proposed that subjective psychological attributes—such as attitudes, values, and sentiments—could be measured with the same quantitative precision as physical stimuli by mapping psychological responses onto an objective psychological continuum.

In Thurstone’s paradigm, an attitude represents the degree of positive or negative affect associated with a psychological object. To construct an equal-appearing interval scale, three foundational theoretical assumptions must be fulfilled:

1. The Unidimensionality of the Affective Continuum: All scale statements must reflect varying degrees of favorability or unfavorability along a single psychological dimension, extending from absolute hostility (represented by scale value 11.0) to maximum endorsement and veneration (represented by scale value 1.0).
2. Independence of Judgment: The objective scale value assigned to each item must be established independently of the personal attitudes of the calibrating judges. According to Thurstone’s principle of invariance, a panel of judges—regardless of their own personal beliefs—can objectively sort verbal assertions along an affective gradient based on the semantic content of the statements.
3. Median Selection Principle: When an individual is presented with calibrated statements, they will endorse statements whose scale values correspond closely to their internal psychological state, rejecting statements that are either more favorable or more unfavorable than their personal position.

In addition to Thurstone’s psychophysics, the scale is informed by Gordon Allport’s (1935) structural conceptualization of attitudes as learned predispositions that exert a dynamic, directive influence upon behavior. In the context of religious orthodoxy, an individual’s attitudinal score is hypothesized to serve as an internal regulator that directly governs public and private religious behaviors, including fiscal sacrifice (tithing), communal participation (church attendance), and behavioral compliance (dietary proscriptions).

Validity

Kenneth R. Hardy (1949) implemented rigorous psychometric procedures to establish the content, construct, and criterion-related validity of the instrument:

Content and Face Validity

Content validity was established through an extensive item-generation process. Hardy compiled an initial pool of 307 potential statements representing diverse viewpoints regarding LDS theology, auxiliary programs, ecclesiastical leadership, and general Christian doctrines. To calibrate these statements, 80 LDS judges (60% undergraduate psychology students and 40% volunteers from the LDS Institute of Religion) performed an equal-appearing interval sort, categorizing each statement into one of 11 piles ranging from extreme favorability (Pile 1) to extreme unfavorability (Pile 11). Only statements demonstrating high inter-judge consensus (low dispersion or interquartile range across judges) were retained. From the 307 initial statements, 175 candidate items were refined into the final 75-item inventory (25 five-alternative multiple-choice items and 50 single-statement check items), ensuring representative coverage of all relevant facets of LDS religious life.

Criterion-Related and Behavioral Validity

To evaluate criterion-related validity, Hardy administered the scale alongside an independent 26-item behavioral questionnaire to a normative sample of 162 adult LDS adherents. This criterion inventory assessed seven observable behaviors historically considered central to LDS commitment:

• Frequency of formal church attendance;
• Active holding of church leadership or teaching callings;
• Compliance with the law of full monetary tithing;
• Strict avoidance of tobacco products;
• Strict avoidance of alcoholic beverages;
• Abstinence from tea and coffee (Word of Wisdom adherence);
• Regularity of private and family prayer.

A composite criterion score was computed for each respondent across these seven behavioral domains. The correlation between respondents’ composite criterion scores and their scores on the Attitudes toward the LDS Church Scale was calculated at r = .79. Hardy noted that this relationship exhibited a non-linear trajectory: individuals scoring within the highly orthodox range (1.0–2.5) demonstrated near-perfect ceiling compliance across all seven behavioral markers, whereas behavioral compliance dropped sharply as scores progressed into the moderate (2.5–4.0) and unorthodox (4.0 and above) ranges. Each of the seven behavioral factors individually correlated significantly with the attitude scale, confirming that the scale accurately predicted external, real-world religious compliance.

Sample Characteristics and Distributional Constraints

The normative validation sample of 162 adults was obtained via door-to-door solicitation utilizing a standardized recruitment script across 339 distributed surveys (yielding a 48% household return rate from 101 distinct households; 63% female, 37% male). An essential psychometric consideration highlighted by Hardy is the pronounced positive skew of the normative sample: more than 50% of the sample obtained mean scores of 2.5 or lower (highly orthodox), the highest score recorded across the entire sample was 8.0, and only six individuals scored at or above the scale midpoint of 6.0. Researchers utilizing the instrument must account for this normative ceiling effect when assessing active LDS populations.

Reliability

The reliability of the Attitudes toward the LDS Church Scale was established through split-half internal consistency analysis using data collected from the 162-member normative sample:

• Split-Half Reliability Coefficient: The instrument was divided into equivalent halves, and the resulting correlation was adjusted using the Spearman-Brown prediction formula. The corrected split-half reliability coefficient was determined to be r = .95.

This exceptionally high reliability coefficient demonstrates that the 75 items across Section I and Section II possess high internal consistency. In contemporary psychometrics, a reliability coefficient exceeding .90 meets the rigorous standards required for individual-level psychological assessment, minimizing measurement error and confirming that the scale values assigned to individual statements operate cohesively along a single affective dimension.

Factor Analysis

At the time of the scale’s development in 1949, exploratory factor analysis (EFA) utilizing modern computational matrix algebra was not standard practice in attitude scale construction. Instead, the instrument was engineered under the psychophysical assumptions of Thurstone scaling, which enforces dimensional homogeneity through judge agreement criteria (interquartile range evaluation) rather than post-hoc latent factor extraction.

Subsequent psychometric examinations of multidimensional religiosity (e.g., Shaw & Wright, 1967) suggest that instruments constructed in this manner possess an overarching general factor (g-factor of religious orthodoxy/sentiment) accompanied by distinct primary sub-factors. If subjected to modern exploratory or confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), the 75 items would be expected to partition into a four-factor hierarchical model:

1. Factor 1: Institutional & Leadership Orthodoxy (loadings on items measuring Joseph Smith’s revelations, General Authority inspiration, and divine guidance of church governance);
2. Factor 2: Behavioral & Covenantal Adherence (loadings on tithing, Word of Wisdom observance, and temple marriage mandates);
3. Factor 3: General Theistic Metaphysics (loadings on God’s existence, bodily resurrection, premortal existence, and prayer efficacy);
4. Factor 4: Perceived Social & Psychosocial Utility (loadings on neighborliness, personality development, financial efficiency, and auxiliary program value).

Instrument / Measurement Tool

The Attitudes toward the LDS Church Scale is structured as a dual-section paper-and-pencil inventory designed for individual or group administration. Key administration and structural specifications are detailed below:

• Test Type: Objective self-report attitude scale based on Thurstone’s method of equal-appearing intervals.
• Administration Format: Self-administered paper-and-pencil questionnaire or digital survey format; individual or group testing.
• Target Population: Adult and adolescent members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Hardy (1949) explicitly cautions that the instrument is inappropriate for individuals under 15 years of age due to the abstract theological vocabulary and complex institutional concepts.
• Estimated Completion Time: Approximately 15 to 30 minutes.
• Total Item Count: 75 items divided across two distinct sections:
  • Section I: 25 multiple-choice items, each consisting of 5 calibrated statements (total of 125 calibrated statements across this section). Respondents choose the single statement per item that best reflects their personal position. Statements are arranged in randomized order within each item to eliminate positional response bias.
  • Section II: 50 discrete single-statement items. Respondents place a checkmark next to each statement with which they agree.
• Calibrated Scale Range: Statement scale values range continuously from 1.0 (maximally favorable / completely orthodox) to 11.0 (maximally unfavorable / completely unorthodox). Scale values are omitted from the testing booklet during administration.
• Scoring Procedure: The respondent’s overall score is obtained by computing the unweighted arithmetic mean of the scale values of all statements endorsed across Section I and Section II:
  
  Individual Score = (Sum of scale values for all chosen statements) / (Total number of chosen statements)
• Diagnostic Score Interpretation (Hardy, 1949):
  • 1.0 – 2.5: Completely orthodox church member. Unwavering faith in LDS leadership, doctrine, and behavioral codes; near-perfect behavioral compliance.
  • 2.5 – 4.0: Orthodox member with some reservations. Broadly committed and active, but holds minor private hesitations regarding specific policies or historical issues.
  • 4.0 – 6.0: Rather unorthodox, but with favorable leanings. Sympathetic toward church values and community life, but maintains substantial doctrinal skepticism and irregular ritual compliance.
  • 6.0 and above: Unorthodox, member in name only. Marked alienation, theological disbelief, and strong institutional detachment or antipathy.

Permissions & Fee and Test Year

The Attitudes toward the LDS Church Scale was authored by Kenneth R. Hardy in 1949 as part of his master’s thesis at the University of Utah. The full instrument, scoring protocols, and calibrated statement values were subsequently published in Marvin E. Shaw and Jack M. Wright’s reference text, Scales for the Measurement of Attitudes (McGraw-Hill, 1967). Because the instrument was developed within an academic thesis over seven decades ago and cataloged in open academic literature, it is widely considered accessible for non-commercial academic research, educational use, and scientific study under fair-use principles, provided appropriate bibliographic citation is accorded to Hardy (1949) and Shaw and Wright (1967). No commercial licensing fees or proprietary permissions are required for non-commercial scholarly research.

References

• Allport, G. W. (1935). Attitudes. In C. Murchison (Ed.), A Handbook of Social Psychology (pp. 798–844). Clark University Press.
• Hardy, K. R. (1949). Construction and validation of a scale measuring attitudes toward the LDS church [Unpublished master’s thesis]. University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT.
• Shaw, M. E., & Wright, J. M. (1967). Scales for the measurement of attitudes. McGraw-Hill Book Company.
• Thurstone, L. L., & Chave, E. J. (1929). The measurement of attitude: A psychophysical method and some experiments with a scale for measuring attitude toward the church. The University of Chicago Press. https://doi.org/10.1037/11544-000

13. Items of the Scale (Questionnaire)