Measuring attitude towards Christianity during childhood and adolescence

Abstract

The Francis scale of attitude towards Christianity, Form ASC4B, was completed by 3600 pupils attending non-churchrelated state maintained schools in England from the first year of the junior school through the fifth year of the secondary school. The results support the consistent unidimensionality, reliability and validity of the scale from the third year of the junior school through the fifth year of the secondary school. While the formal statistics of unidimensionality, reliability and validity remain quite impressive for the first and second years of the junior school, the performance of the scale among this younger age group is less satisfactory than among the older age groups. Norms are presented for boys and girls from each year group separately, demonstrating a persistent decline in attitude towards Christianity for both sexes between the ages of 8 and 16 yr.