That Burning Bush Again: the psychometric assessment of stages in religious thinking

The influence of Dr Ronald Goldman's work on RE in the 1960s is not disputed. However, questions still remain about what was actually measured by his questionnaire. This article describes an attempt to define the constructs inherent in Goldman's work, to examine what his instrument was actually assessing, and to what extent his instrument can be shown to measure unidimensional factors. It is shown by this study that the statements made by children of different ages and quoted by Goldman as representing different levels of thinking do not cohere well. Nonetheless it is possible to identify a number of these statements which do cohere well. However, even these purified cores of statements do not function as Goldman predicted, that is, as a measure of cognitive development related to age. No correlation can be shown between the so‐called levels of thinking and age. However, an highly significant correlation emerges between ‘level’ of thinking and church attendance. This leads to the suggestion that Goldman's interview‐based test was not measuring a stage in cognitive development but rather a style of thinking related to religiosity.