Question

You want to measure attitudes toward religion. You create a measure with 20 statements using the scale (1=strongly disagree, 3=neutral, 5=strongly agree). Note the following three the statements.

Statement 1: "I believe in a religion."
Statement 2: "Part of who I am stems from my religious beliefs."
Statement 3: "I believe that religion is unnecessary."
You administer this measure to a group of 100 college students in order to test the internal validity of his measure. What type of correlation coefficients (r) would you expect to find between Statements 1 and 2 and between Statements 1 and 3? What would these correlation coefficients tell you about the internal reliability of his measure?

Answer 1

The correlation coefficient measures the relationship between different statements about attitudes toward religion in this measure. A positive correlation is expected between statements about belief in religion and religious identity, while a negative correlation is expected between belief in religion and the belief that it is unnecessary. These correlation coefficients can help determine the internal reliability of the measure.

Step-by-step explanation:

The correlation coefficients (r) between Statements 1 and 2 and between Statements 1 and 3 can help assess the internal reliability of the measure.

For Statements 1 and 2, we would expect a positive correlation coefficient (r) since both statements involve beliefs in religion. A positive correlation would indicate that as belief in religion increases or decreases, the sense of identity stemming from religious beliefs also increases or decreases.

For Statements 1 and 3, we would expect a negative correlation coefficient (r) since Statement 1 expresses belief in religion while Statement 3 expresses the belief that religion is unnecessary. A negative correlation would indicate that as belief in religion increases, the belief that religion is unnecessary decreases, and vice versa.

The correlation coefficients can provide insights into the internal reliability of the measure. If the correlation coefficients between the statements are consistent with the expected patterns, it suggests that the measure is internally reliable in capturing attitudes toward religion among the college students.