Age and Educational Level and Their Relationship with Religious Orientation
Ebrahim Khodadady, Ensieh Golbooie Mousavi, Farideh Sarraf

Abstract
This study explored whether the administration of an enlarged 33-item religious orientation scale (ROS) to grade three high school (G3HS) students will result in the extraction of the same underlying latent variables obtained from university students. To this end, the Persian ROS validated with the latter in Iran by Khodadady and Bagheri (2012) was administered to 780 G3HS students in the same city and country. The results showed that instead of seven, six factors, i.e., Social, Concessional, Humanitarian, Inspirational, Theo-pacific, and Sacrificial, underlie G3HS students’ religious indicators. Not only do the factors extracted from the G3HS and university students’ responses on the ROS differ in terms of their number and order, but also the Social factor as the first religious orientation of G3HS students refines itself into two by having four of its items load acceptably on Intrinsic factor unique to university students. These findings thus show as humans become more mature developmentally and educationally, they derive more orientations from religion. Furthermore, as more religious principles are compromised in order to become Concessional, the less Social both the G3HS and university students become. The Concessional G3HS students also become less Humanitarian. Suggestions are made for future research.

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