Abstract
In a study of religious and social attitudes of Mormon students at Brigham Young University, Christensen and Cannon (1978) found dramatic increases in religious orthodoxy from 1935 to 1973. The present extended analysis of their data explores the effects of this high level of religious orthodoxy. As conformity to the orthodox position increased, the influence of demographic variables (except membership in the Mormon Church) almost disappeared. An attempt to derive reliable scales from the data failed due to the lack of variance within the data, but provided an analogy. It is suggested that the lack of variability in opinions reflected in the Mormon students' orthodoxy may be dysfunctional just as the lack of variance in the data makes them less meaningful than they otherwise would be.
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