Dr Li Is Interested in Creating a Measurement of Religiosity

question 55

Essay

Dr. Li is interested in creating a measurement of religiosity. According to the dictionary, religiosity is "the quality of being religious; piety; devoutness." He creates a measure comprising 10 statements. People respond to each statement using the following scale (1 = strongly disagree, 3 = neither agree nor disagree, 5 = strongly agree). Some of the statements are below.
Statement 1: "I believe in a religion."
Statement 2: "Part of who I am stems from my religious beliefs."
Statement 3: "I believe that religion is unnecessary."
Dr. Li gives his new measure to a group of 100 adults in order to test the internal validity of his measure. What type of correlation coefficients (r) would Dr. Li expect to find between Statements 1 and 2 and between Statements 1 and 3? What would these correlation coefficients tell Dr. Li about the internal reliability of his measure?

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Definitions:

Cortisol

A steroid hormone released by the adrenal glands in response to stress, playing a crucial role in the body's stress response and metabolism.

Neural Connections

The links between neurons in the brain through which they communicate with each other.

Long-term Potentiation

A lasting increase in signal transmission between two neurons that results from their simultaneous activation, believed to be a cellular mechanism underlying learning and memory.

Neurons

Specialized cells in the nervous system that transmit information through electrical and chemical signals.