Document Type

Conference Proceeding

Publication Date

4-1-2010

Abstract

In 2006, there were 1.48 million non-profits in the United States. Of those, 190,000 were religiously oriented charities. Most charities rely at least in part on the generosity of others. However, review of the extant literature demonstrated a lack of scales designed to assess an individual’s generosity. Therefore, a scale was developed in order to measure this construct and its related dimensions. A random sample of University students (n=106) from a small, Christian university and members of a local church (n=68) chose to participate for a total of 174 participants. The generosity scale was a 14 item self-report scale designed to possess three subscales: charitable (financial) giving (7 items), volunteerism (3 items), and donations of goods and services (4 items). The purpose of the present study is to investigate the validity of the generosity scale by exploring its internal consistency, factor structure and relationship to a scale of spirituality. Results suggest that as originally conceived the subscales for Charity and Donations and the Generosity scale as a whole show adequate internal consistency. Comparison of student and church participants provides some validation for these scales as well. However, the Volunteerism subscale possessed inadequate . . . .

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