Religious orientation and conversion experience

Little is known about the impact of religious experience on a person's way of being religious. The present study investigated the relation between religious conversion and a religious orientation that includes a critical, open-ended, and integrated approach. A test-retest reliability study was conducted on the religiosity scales. Construct validity of the religiosity scales and religious orientation factors was also investigated. The subjects were 144 Catholic laywomen associated parishes and 178 sisters in the FSPA religious order.;Religious orientation was measured by a battery of six scales: Extrinsic, Intrinsic, External-R, Internal, Interactional-R, and Orthodoxy. These scales make up Batson's Religious Orientation Battery. Religious integration was measured by Lipsmeyer's Integration scale and conversion was measured by Scobie's questions on conversion experience.;The results of the test-retest reliability study showed that for the sisters little confidence can be placed in any of the findings except for those involving the External-R and Interactional-R scales because of the low reliability of the scales and for the laywomen all of the scales had good reliability with coefficients of.77 or above. It was found that the women who had experienced either a sudden or gradual conversion or religious awakening scored significantly higher on the Interactional-R scale than those who had experienced an unconscious conversion. However, the conversion groups did not differ on the Integration scale.;The study results lend construct validity to Batson's Interactional-R scale, but not to his three factors of religious orientation. The sisters scored significantly higher on the Interactional-R scale than the laywomen indicating that the scale does measure an aspect of religious orientation that increases with overall commitment to a religious life. The present study did not find the three factors that were produced by Batson's studies. There were only two factors for the laywomen and they did not include a Quest factor. The factors for the sisters were more similar, but the lack of reliability of the scales for the sisters made the factor results not very reliable.;The usefulness of the present findings was discussed in view of the methodological considerations that were present and the limits on the generalizability of the results. Directions for future research were suggested. The use of clearer operationalization of constructs and statistically powerful methodology was encouraged.