Date of Award
6-1986
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Psychology (PsyD)
Department
Graduate Department of Clinical Psychology
Abstract
A new instrument, the Spiritual Leadership Qualities Inventory (SLQI), was developed by Wichern (1980) from Biblical constructs for the purpose of objectively measuring levels of spiritual maturity for leadership positions. The construct validity of the SLQI was examined psychologically by means of factor analysis and correlation with other indicators of spiritual maturity. Item level factor analysis of the SLQI indicates that between two to six factors best explains the variance of the SLQI. The resulting intuitive clusters of the factor analysis corresponded highly with a biblical study by E. J. Carr of the SLQI's underlying theoretical construct. Neither the factor analysis or the theoretical analysis support Wichern's original assumption and development of 19 subscales for the SLQI. The positive correlation of the SLQI with other scales of similar constructs, the Spiritual Well Being Scale (SWB) and its subscales and the Spiritual Maturity Inventory (SMI), supported the study's hypotheses and were highly significant (pi .001). However the SWB scale and its subscales and the SMI had a much greater proportion of common variance with each other than with the SLQI. Finally no significant relationships with the background data and single item scales measuring religious behavior were found except for self-report of importance of religion. Although the SLQI is significantly related to both the SMI and SWB, the magnitude of relationship is trivial both in terms of absolute amount of common variance and relative degree of relationship. In light of the brevity of the currently existing SWB scale and SMI scale and their greater validity found by the Bufford (1984) and Campise, Ellison & Kinsman (1979) studies and others, the value of pursuing further revision and validation of the SLQI to measure the construct of spiritual maturity comes into question. However the concept of developing Christian inventories from biblically based constructs was supported in this study by the high degree of correspondence between the intuitive clusters from the factor analysis and the theoretically derived clusters from the biblical analysis.
Recommended Citation
Carr, Sophia A., "A Theoretical and Empirical Examination of the Construct Validity of the Spiritual Leadership Qualities Inventory" (1986). Doctor of Education (EdD). 166.
https://digitalcommons.georgefox.edu/edd/166