Title:
The Free Will-Determinism Scale.
Author(s):
Stroessner and Green.
Variable:
Belief in free will or determinism.
Description:
The Free Will-Determinism Scale (Stroessner & Green, 1990) is a 17-item self-report scale with
some items adapted from earlier work by Viney, Waldman, and Barchilon (1982). It measures the
degree to which an individual believes in free will or determinism. The items are presented in a
Likert-type format with responses ranging from (1) Strongly agree to (9) Strongly disagree, so that
possible scores on the scale can range between 17 and 153. The scale yields three scores Religiousphilosophical determinism, Psychosocial determinism and Libertarianism. The score on Religiousphilosophical determinism is obtained by summing the responses to items 6, 8, 12, 14, 15, and 17.
The score on Psychosocial determinism is the sum of responses on items 1, 2, 5, 7, 11, 13, and 16.
The Libertarianism score is determined by summing the responses to items 3, 4, 9, and 10. The
score on the belief in determinism is calculated by reverse scoring and summing the Libertarianism
items 3, 4, 9, and 10. Sample items include ‘My choices are limited by God's plan for my life’
(Religious-philosophical determinism item-6), ‘I will have free will all of my life’ (Psychosocial
determinism item-3), and ‘My exercise of free will is limited by my upbringing’ (Libertarianism
item-1).
Sample
The Free Will-Determinism Scale was developed for use among both clinical and non-clinical
samples. For example, Stroessner and Green (1990) administered the scale to USA College
students. Navrátil, McGuckin, Shevlin and Lewis (2000) employed the scale among a sample of
Northern Irish University students.
Reliability
Internal Consistency: Stroessner and Green (1990) initially constructed a 19-item scale with some
items adapted from earlier work by Viney et al. (1982). These items were subsequently factor
analysed using Principal Axes with Varimax rotation to determine the internal validity of the scale
among data from 507 American University students. Three distinct factors emerged accounting for
34% of the variance, each conforming to one of the predicted dimensions: seven items on a
Psychosocial determinism factor, six items on a Religious-philosophical determinism factor, and
four items on a Libertarianism factor. Each of the 19-items, 17 loaded on only one of three factors,
while two items loaded on neither factor and were subsequently dropped. The scale yields three
sub-scale scores Religious-philosophical determinism, Psychosocial determinism and
Libertarianism. The internal consistency of the three sub-scales constructed on the basis of
loadings in the factor analysis were .69 for the four items regarding Libertarianism, .64 for the
seven items relating to Psychosocial determinism and .87 for the six Religious-philosophical
determinism items. However, Navrátil, et al. (2000) failed to replicate the three-factor solution
found by Stroessner and Green (1990) among a sample of Northern Irish students, using
confirmatory factor analysis.
Validity
Stroessner and Green (1990) provide tentative evidence of the validity of the final 17-item scale.
First, with respect to the relationship between free will and an attitudes toward punishment measure
(Stroessner & Green, 1990) containing two sub-scales, that of Rehabilitation and Punitiveness.
There was no significant association between scores on the three Free Will Determinism sub-scales
and Rehabilitation scores. However, there were significant associations between Punitiveness
scores and the sub-scales scores of Religious-philosophical determinism (r=-.14, p=.002),
Psychosocial determinism (r=-.06, p=.10) and Libertarianism (r=.08, p=.04). Moreover,
respondents with higher scores on Psychosocial determinism or Religious-philosophical
determinism or Libertarianism were found to be more Punitive than those with lower scores.
Second, concerning the relationship between the Free Will-Determinism Scale and a Locus of
Control Scale (James, 1973), a significant association was found between Locus of Control scores
and Religious-philosophical determinism scores (r=.09, p=.03) and Psychosocial determinism
scores (r=.40, p=.001). However, no significant association was found between Locus of Control
scores and Libertarianism scores (r=.03, p=.28). In addition high scores on either type of
determinism were associated with more external Locus of Control scores.
Location
Stroessner, S. J., & Green, C. W. (1990). Effects of belief in free will or determinism on attitudes
toward punishment and locus of control. Journal of Social Psychology, 130, 789-799.
Results and Comment
The questions and issues that The Free Will-Determinism Scale raises provide a potentially rich
source of future research with issues relating to such diverse aspects of personality as religious
experience, locus of control, attribution of responsibility and blame, and the limitations of selfcontrol. However, at present the psychometric properties presented by Stroessner and Green
(1990), among a sample of American University students, only offer tentavive support for the
reliability and validity of the scale. Notwithstanding this, the findings of Navrátil et al. (2000),
among a sample of Northern Irish University student, does question the generalisbility of
Stroessner and Green‘s (1990) findings. Further work is obviously required, primarily to establish
a coherent factor structure. This may require removing some of the existing items or generating a
new item pool to tap the present three factors. Such work is worthy given the potential value of a
reliable and valid measure of free will to researchers.
Publications (chronological)
James, W.H. (1973). Internal versus external control of reinforcement as a basic variable in
learning theory. In J.P. Robinson, & P.R. Shaver (Eds.), Measures of Social Psychological
Attitudes (pp. 237-243). Ann Arbor, MI: Survey Research Center for Social Research.
Navaratil, M. McGuckin, C., Shevlin, M &. Lewis, C.A. (May, 2000.). The Free Will-Determinism
Scale: Confirmatory factor analysis. Poster presented at the Annual Conference of the Northern
Ireland Branch of the The British Psychological Society, Carrigart, Republic of Ireland.
Stroessner, S. J., & Green, C. W. (1990). Effects of belief in free will or determinism on attitudes
toward punishment and locus of control. Journal of Social Psychology, 130, 789-799.
Viney, W., Waldman, D. A., & Barchilon, J. (1982). Attitudes toward punishment in relation to
beliefs in free will and determinism. Human Relations, 35, 939-950.
Reviewers
Christopher Alan Lewis, Mark Shevlin, Conor McGuckin, School of Psychology and
Communication, University of Ulster at Magee College, Londonderry, Northern Ireland, BT48 7JL,
U.K. CA.LEWIS@ULST.AC.UK and Marek Navrátil, Czech Academy of Science, Department of
Psychology, Veveri 97, 602 00, Brno, Czech Republic.
Aside from the initial work of Stroessner and Green (1990), there has been no subsequent use of the
scale. This is somewhat surprising given the rich potential of hypotheses available for researchers
to test. For example, the relationship of free will to various individual differences variables such as
religious attitude and experience, personality, political attitude, attribution of responsibility and
blame, and self-control. However, before such work is undertaken the psychometric properties of
the Free Will-Determinism Scale need to be examined further. A first step in this process is trying
to replicate the factor structure of the scale among a different sample.
The aim of the present study was to confirm the three-factor model of the Free Will-Determinism
Scale among a sample of Northern Irish University Undergraduate students.
METHOD
Sample
The sample consisted of 106 university undergraduates attending the University of Ulster at Magee
College. The mean age of respondents was 29 years with a standard deviation of 9 years. The ages
ranged between 19 and 51 years. There were 21 males (20%) and 85 females (80%).
Analysis
To test the dimensionality of the Free Will-Determinism Scale a sample covariance matrix was
computed from the sample raw data using PRELIS2.3 (Jöreskog & Sörbom, 1999a). A three factor
confirmatory factor analytic model was specified and estimated using LISREL8.3 (Jöreskog &
Sörbom, 1999b). Each item was specified to load on one factor (Religious-philosophical
determinism: 6, 8, 12, 14, 15, and 17; Psychosocial determinism 1, 2, 5, 7, 11, 13, and 16;
Libertarianism 3, 4, 9, and 10). The factors were specified to be correlated and these correlations
were estimated. A path diagram of the model is shown in Figure 1.
Figure 1. Path diagram of the confirmatory factor model of the Free Will-Determinism Scale.
The circles represent the latent variables or factors. The boxes denote the observed variables, or
items. The arrows connecting the factors and observed variables are factor loadings. The curved
arrows connecting the factors denote inter-factor correlations. The unique variance associated with
each item is denoted by the symbol .
RESULTS
Among the present sample of Northern Irish University students the mean scores on the three subscales of the Free Will-Determinism Scale were calculated: Religious-philosophical determinism
(mean=36.95, sd=9.36), Psychosocial determinism (mean=36.70, sd=9.15), and Libertarianism
(mean=17.59, sd=6.55). As Stroessner and Green (1990) do not provide any mean scores for their
sample of American University students no cross-cultural comparisons can be made.
The fit of the three factor model was assessed using the chi-square (where an associated probability
value greater than 0.05 indicates acceptable fit), the Root Mean Square Error of Approximation
(RMSEA: Steiger, 1990), and the standardised root mean square residual (SRMR) (where a value
less than 0.05 indicates acceptable fit). The fit indices showed that the three factor model was not
an acceptable explanation of the sample data (2=221, df=116, p=>0.05; RMSEA=0.093,
SRMR=0.099). These indices clearly indicate that the three-factor solution proposed by Stroessner
and Green (1990) is not an adequate description of the sample data from Northern Irish
respondents.