A Validated Intrinsic Religious Motivation Scale

Research on intrinsic and extrinsic religion has been troubled by conceptual diffuseness and questionable scale validity. Hunt and King have proposed greater specificity in conceptualization and measurement in future work. This paper attempts to specify and measure a single crucial dimension identified by Hunt and King, namely ultimate versus instrumental religious motivation. Two validation studies were done utilizing persons nominated by ministers as having either ultimate (intrinsic) or instrumental (extrinsic) religious motivation. A new 10-item Intrinsic Religious Motivation Scale is proposed, and measurement problems are discussed.