The Catholic Marian Spirituality Scale: Conceptualization and measurement

The specific context of the current research is Catholic Marian Spirituality (CMS), which embodies a set of beliefs and practices intended to make its adherents closely connected to Jesus Christ by imitating the virtues of the Blessed Virgin Mary. This research project aimed to conceptualize and to develop a measurement of CMS. It also aimed to establish content validity through expert review and the refining of the items based on Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) and Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA), and to establish internal reliability of the CMS Scale using reliability analysis. The study adopted both qualitative and quantitative methods to develop the questionnaire. The questionnaire was tested for content, construct and face validity through interview and pilot study. Six experts in the field of different dimensions of the CMS and scale development were requested to review the draft questionnaire for content validity of the research construct. The scale developed in the pilot study was tested among selected participants. The initial scale consisted of 44 items developed from Marian Spirituality literature and the feedback from both experts and eight non-experts (Catholic lay people among whom the survey was conducted). One hundred and forty Catholics were recruited to complete the 44 item CMS Questionnaire for the pilot study. The samples for the pilot and main study were separately recruited. The main study was conducted on a convenience sample of 853 Church-attending Catholic lay people over the age of eighteen. Overall, the study reported strong reliability with coefficient alphas ranging from .79 to .95. Thus, the present study has sought to identify and explore the underlying factors in Catholic Marian Spirituality and to develop a measurement for the same.