Assessment, Statistics, and Research

Two 10-item scales assess the degree to which couples view marital sexuality from a spiritual perspective. Both scales published by Hernandez, Mahoney, and Pargament (2011) are rated on the same 7-point scale. The wording is clearly aimed at married couples. Although they use the word God , note that in a similar scale focused on children from some of the same authors, participants are instructed to think of their own deity. Revised Manifestation of God in Marital Sexuality Two sample items:      1) God played a role in my decision to have a sexual relationship with my spouse.      2) Our sexual relationship speaks to the presence of God. Revised Sacred Qualities of Marital Sexuality Two sample items:      1) Being sexually intimate with my spouse feels like a deeply spiritual experience.      2) Our sexual relationship seems like a miracle to me. Scoring There are 10-items in the scale. Participants are asked to respond on a 1 to 7 scale where 1 = Strongly

Two scales measure perspectives on the sacredness of parenting (Murray-Swank et al., 2006) and two others look at spirituality and pregnancy (Mahoney et al., 2009).  The authors advise researchers that they may change the word "baby" to other child age labels depending on the age of the children in their study. Thus, researchers may use labels of "toddler," "child," or "teen" in place of "baby." Spirituality Although the authors use the word God , the instructions invite participants to use their own word for the deity. Following is a copy of the instructions. Notice the different term for the scale's name. Revised Manifestation of God in Parenting Directions: Some of the following questions use the word "God." Different people use different terms for God, such as "Higher Power," "Divine Spirit," "Spiritual Force," "Holy Spirit," "Yahweh," "Allah,", &qu

The reason counselor's tests are not reliable is that reliability is a property of scores not tests.  This isn't a matter of semantics. Think about it this way. Give all the students in one school an achievement test. The test items don't change so they appear stable, consistent, and reliable. However, when publishers report reliability values, they calculate the reliability statistics based on scores. Scores vary from one administration to another. If you ever took a test twice and got a different score, you know what I mean. Individuals change from day to day. And we change from year to year. Also, even a representative sample of students for a nation can be different each year. Everytime we calculate a reliability statistic, the statistic is slightly different. Reliability values vary with the sample. Reliability values also vary with the method used for calculation. You can get high reliability values using  coefficient alpha  with scores from a one-time