Abstract
Spiritual gifts inventories appear to be constructed in a scientific manner, but they are often technically inadequate. The current study examined the psychometric properties of the Objective Questionnaire Testing set of the Motivational Spiritual Gifts Inventory (MGI). Analyses of the questionnaire data indicated that despite the apparent strength of the spiritual gifts subscales’ content validity, reliability fell only in the poor to moderate range. Construct validity was also tenuous. Interscale factor analysis using an oblique rotation supported a three-factor rather than a seven-factor solution. Furthermore, 37% of the items correlated more highly with a subscale other than intended. These three findings cast doubt on this instrument's ability to assess seven separate sets of personality and behavioral characteristics. Strengths and weakness of spiritual gifts inventories and recommendations for their future use are discussed.
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