THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL FOR THE PSYCHOLOGY OF RELIGION, 15(2), 99–121

Copyright © 2005, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.

THEORY

Faith Development Research Revisited:

Accounting for Diversity in Structure,
Content, and Narrativity of Faith
Heinz Streib
Research Center for Biographical Studies in Contemporary Religion
Universität Bielefeld, Germany

Based on the recent proposal in this journal (Streib, 2001a) to revise James Fowler’s
(1981) faith development theory, the article argues for a revision of faith develop-
ment research to account not only for structural diversity, but also for narrative and
content diversity. Therefore, it suggests the inclusion of content-analytical and narra-
tive-analytical procedures into faith development research. The argument develops in
light of a review of 53 empirical studies that all have used Fowler’s faith development
instrument or a variation thereof; this review pays attention to the instruments that
have been proposed for quantitative research in faith development, but especially to
the empirical studies that have already included narrative- and content-analytical ap-
proaches. The article concludes with a proposal for a revised research design that in-
tegrates attention for structure, content, and narrative and suggests a coherent meth-
odological procedure for future research in faith development.

Within the relatively short time period of 20 years, James Fowler’s (1981) theory
of faith development has attracted attention and inspired empirical research both in
the United States and worldwide. The growing reputation of faith development
theory had its beginning in the Center for Faith Development at Emory
University1—which, however, never claimed to be the sole faith development re-

Request for reprints should be sent to Heinz Streib, Research Center for Biographical Studies in
Contemporary Religion, Universität Bielefeld, Postfach 10 01 31, D-33501 Bielefeld, Germany.
E-mail: heinz.streib@uni-bielefeld.de
1The Center for Faith Development was renamed later the Center for Research in Faith and Moral

Development.
100 STREIB

search laboratory and never sought to establish rigid research coordination or to

propagate a sacrosanct theory and methodology. Faith development theory has
therefore experienced widespread dissemination from the very beginning and a
creative evolution of both theoretical perspectives and research methods. Thus, the
strategy for the operationalization of faith development theory in empirical re-
search procedures has been designed mostly independently for every project that
includes the faith development perspective. However, this does not mean reinvent-
ing the wheel each time, because there is a Manual for Faith Development Re-
search (Moseley, Jarvis, & Fowler, 1986, 1993)2 and because a large number of
dissertations have been done on this topic, constituting a tradition that is, however,
far from being homogeneous.
It could be left to each researcher to find his or her methodological procedure
individually. However, common themes and also innovative proposals emerge
across the research designs and call for more coherent reflection—a task taken up
in this article. The methodological proposal in this article does not merely take a
middle position, however. It benefits from the theoretical critique and advance-
ment of structural-developmental theory in general and of faith development the-
ory in particular (Streib, 1991, 1997b, 2001a, 2003b, 2003c) for which it sketches
the methodological consequences. Attention to structural diversity, content-spe-
cific quality and narrativity of faith is the core of the proposal; their neglect in the
“classical” faith development research design—which appears disconnected from
faith development theory to some extent—is the focus of the critique.

STARTING POINT: ACCOUNTING FOR STRUCTURAL

DIVERSITY

Administering and coding the faith development interview is an exercise in herme-

neutics. Language, in the form of verbal response to questions, is the observable da-
tum upon which the interviewer/coder bases inferences about the mental and emo-
tional processes of the person being interviewed. In order to do this, the interviewer
must interpret these verbal responses and reconstruct them in terms of structural de-
velopmental theory. (Moseley et al., 1986, p. 16; 1993, p. 13)

As this quote from the Manual demonstrates, the “classical” faith development
research design has affinity to an interpretative approach, because the core object
of research consists of an underlying faith structure, rather than of surface phe-
nomena such as knowledge, assent to a statement, or report of a practice. However,
this very quote also explicates how the account for hermeneutical diversity is chan-
2If not specified otherwise, “Manual” refers to the Manual for Research in Faith Development, re-

vised version, published in 1993.

 FAITH DEVELOPMENT RESEARCH 101

neled immediately: The “reconstruction in terms of structural developmental the-

ory” implies to discern the relatively stable pattern of faith, understood as a struc-
tural whole whose development is seen as “change that eventuates in increasingly
complex structures” (p. 3). Certainly, identifying the structures that may or may
not be fully conscious to the interviewed person is an interpretation. The question
is whether and how this interpretation is able to invite and fully reflect the diversity
of faith structures.

The “Classical” Method According to the Manual for Faith

Development Research
The data gathered in “classical” faith development research consists of responses
to a series of questions that address basically four dimensions: life review, relation-
ships, values and commitments, and religion. Thus, an interview of about 2 hours
results in 30 to 50 pages of text abundant with belief statements and personal narra-
tives. The Manual, however, gravitates toward a structural interpretation and ex-
plains that “a key point in learning to code a faith development interview is learn-
ing how to think in structural terms”—whereby “structure can be defined as those
patterns of mental operation that operate on content” (p. 21). The interview texts
are coded by assigning to each passage a faith stage score in light of the most ap-
propriate Aspect(s) of faith (Form of logic; Perspective-taking; Form of moral
judgment; Bounds of social awareness; Locus of authority; Form of world coher-
ence; Symbolic function).3 The responses are thus assumed to display the structure
of faith in one of its seven Aspects—which, one for all others, can be taken as rep-
resenting the coherent whole of the person’s faith stage. To bring the evaluation
process to a conclusion, the faith stage scores assigned to each response of the in-
terview text are averaged into a final faith stage. The Aspects forming the basis for
the stage assignments are noted during the evaluation procedure, but no further
evaluative steps are undertaken using these assigned Aspects.

Toward Better Accounting for Diversity Within the

“Classical” Procedure
The disregard for the Aspect-specific character of the stage assignments is problem-
atic and could be justified only under the assumption made by faith development the-
ory that the stages represent a “structural whole.” However, if we have reason to raise
some doubts or simply want to test whether this assumption is correct, we need to
pay special attention to the Aspect-specifity of stage assignments for the individual
3The seven Aspects of faith can be visualized as a heptagon in which the seven Aspects form a co-

herent whole at a specific niveau of development. This is visualized in a figure in Fowler’s chapter,
“Faith and the Structuring of Meaning” (Fowler, 1980, p. 32).
102 STREIB

TABLE 1
Steps of Analysis in Faith Development Research Revisited

Steps of Analysis Procedures and Results in More Detail

Structural analysis Structural coding sentence by sentence results in:

1.1 Stage-aspect coding.
1.2 Aspect-specific Stage Mapping.
1.3 Stage Assignment.
Content analysis Important pre-defined categories:
(using pre-defined categories or, 2.1 Values, Authority Images, Concept of Death (or other
alternatively, inductive-analytical content in the Aspects).
procedures) 2.2 Social construction of self and of other (Noam, 1990).
2.3 Image of God (Rizzuto, 1979).
Narrative analysis Narrative analysis, according to Schütze (1981, 1983, 1984):
3.1 Identifying and coding of narrative elements in the
interview text.
3.2 Coding of (estimated) biographical time of each
narrative segment.
3.3 Reconstruction of biographical trajectory by
re-arranging the narrative segments.
3.4 Interpretation in light of narrative psychology (e.g.,
McAdams, 1990; McAdams, Josselson, & Lieblich,
2001).

case and across the cases in entire research projects. In this way, we could identify
Aspect-specific accumulation of stage scores. The results could be visualized in a
Stage-Aspect map, which is a decisive step to better accounting for the diversity of
faith structures (see Table 1).4 This could be of relevance especially in research
adopting the religious styles perspective (Streib, 2001a). For example, we can expect
a predominantly “wordly” focus of those interview passages that fall under the As-
pect of “Form of Logic” or “Perspective-Taking” and a more existential or religious
focus of those interview passages that fall under the Aspects of “Locus of Authority”
or “Form of World Coherence.” If we keep these Aspects separate, we are able to
document a potential Aspect-specific difference in the developmental niveaus; for
example, a lag of development in existential or religious issues. The question ad-
dressed in previous research, whether the relation between religious fundamentalism
and complexity of thought exist for existential content only (Hunsberger, Pratt, &
Pancer, 1994; see also Pancer, Jackson, Hunsberger, & Pratt, 1995; and Hunsberger,
Alisat, Pancer, & Pratt, 1996), can be reflected on in terms of faith development.
This could be of special relevance for research with fundamentalist individuals, if we
have reason to assume that a fundamentalist orientation consists of a revival of ear-

4This procedure of Stage-Aspect mapping —using compter assistance—has been included in our

third edition of the Manual (Fowler, Streib, & Keller, 2004).

 FAITH DEVELOPMENT RESEARCH 103

lier styles that coexist with later developmental achievements as it is assumed in the
religious styles perspective (Streib, 1997a, 2001a, 2001c).
A more precise account for the diversity of faith structures would require also a
revision of the Aspects themselves in light of the recent discussions in develop-
mental psychology. In particular, the description of the higher stages can achieve
better adequacy and consistency. This is most obvious for the Aspect “Forms of
Logic,” which has been designed in reference to the Piagetian theorizing in the
1970s and 1980s; a revision needs to include the extensive discussions about
post-formal operations (Alexander & Langer, 1990; Cartwright, 2001; Commons,
Richards, & Armon, 1984; Richards & Commons, 1990; Sinnott, 1998), women’s
way of knowing (Belenky, Clinchy, Goldberger, & Tarule, 1986; Brown &
Gilligan, 1992; Gilligan 1982; Labouvie-Vief, 1996), and wisdom research
(Baltes, Glück, & Kunzmann, 2002; Labouvie-Vief & Diehl, 2000; Staudinger,
Smith, & Baltes, 1994; Sternberg, 1990). “Perspective-Taking” (Selman, 1980)
has been revised by Selman himself and his colleagues (Selman & Schultz, 1988;
Selman, Watts, & Schultz, 1997), but the work of Noam (1985, 1988, 1990, 1996,
1999) should be included for a profiling of the interpersonal aspect. The discussion
on moral development (Pasupathi & Staudinger, 2001; Rest, Narvaez, Thoma, &
Bebeau, 1999) also calls for a revision of the Aspect “Form of Moral Judgment.”
These revisions of the first three Aspects and the related discussions have implica-
tions for the other Aspects, “Bounds of Social Awareness,” “Locus of Authority,”
“Form of World Coherence,” and “Symbolic Function,” for which we cannot refer
to extensive discussions. The Aspect “Bounds of Social Awareness,” for example,
which could be combined with “Perspective-Taking” into a single aspect, could
gain by recent proposals for a developmental scale of attitudes toward strangeness,
familiarity, and styles of interreligious negotiations (Streib, 2001b; in press),
which in turn refer to Selman’s work.
Numerous modification proposals in structural-developmental theory include
the awareness that development, thus also faith development, may not proceed in a
coherent and invariant series of stages,5 but that there may be domain-specific
progress (Cartwright, 2001), addition, and integration rather than abandonment
and acquisition (Clore & Fitzgerald, 2002), regression (Nelson, 2002),6 or replica-
tion of earlier stages (Streib, 2001a, 2001c) and even multiple paths in develop-
ment (Streib, 2003c; cf. also Baltes, Lindenberger, & Staudinger, 1998;
Bronfenbrenner & Morris, 1998; Lachman & James, 1997). Taking account of
these innovative proposals would increase the awareness of how diverse faith de-
velopment may be.
5A suggestion such as Sternberg’s (2001a, 2001b) to teach wisdom in schools would be meaning-

less without the assumption that children already have the capacity to learn about and appropriate such
competence.
6With reference to object-relations psychology, Nelson (2002) suggests to revise Fowler’s faith de-

velopment model to include regression as part of stage transition.

104 STREIB

Beyond the “Classical” Procedure

Because structure is the key focus of the researcher’s attention according to classi-
cal faith development theory, content, function, emotion, and life history are at
risk to be marginalized. This is true despite the claim of faith development theory
to account for the multi-dimensionality of “faith.”7 Faith development research
claims to take such multi-dimensionality into account, if viewed against the back-
ground of research in the strict Piagetian model.8 However, if we take a closer
look at what kind of data are carried into the final analysis, it can be maintained
that structural evaluation is the key dimension for research in faith development
according to the Manual. The variety of factors in Fowler’s (1982) dynamic
model, such as “life history and marker events,” “the contents of faith,” “the dy-
namics of the unconscious,” or “the religio-cultural force-field” are not evaluated
explicitly; these factors are not operationalized. Hence, the claim in the Manual
(p. 4) that faith development theory incorporates factors that are ignored or
minimalized by Piaget may have some credibility for faith development theory;
however, we cannot discern an operationalization of these factors in the coding
procedure in faith development research.
As a consequence from a revision of Fowler’s faith development theory
(Streib, 1991, 1997b, 2001a, 2003b), we need to consider three points of revi-
sion in the faith development research design: (a) to attend to cross-domain dif-
ferences and to structural diversity within one stage or style of faith, (b) to ex-
plicitly account for content and content diversity, and (c) to include the
dimensions of life history and narrative dynamic. The first of these revisions has
been addressed earlier. Before addressing the other two points, an overview of
the numerous contributions that have been made to faith development research
in the last two decades may help us identify the new lines of development. Some
creative and innovative proposals for a revision of faith development research
emerge from this great number of projects.

OVERVIEW OF EMPIRICAL RESEARCH IN FAITH

DEVELOPMENT

Within the last 20 years, Fowler’s faith development theory has inspired a great
number of theoretical and empirical projects. In a survey of databases, mainly Dis-
7A good illustration for faith development’s multi-dimensionality is Fowler’s (1982) figure, “Toward a

Model of the Dynamics of Adult Faith,” which explicitly includes the dimensions of life history and marker
events in time, the contents of faith, the dynamics of the unconscious, and the religio-cultural force field.
8The Manual claims: “Rather than isolate the developmental from the psycho-dynamic, as is done

by Piaget and Kohlberg, we have attempted to integrate these two forms of activity. In so doing, we have
heightened aspects of constructivist epistemology ignored or minimized by Piaget, for example,
socio-historical conditions and their impact on the narrative structure of self-understanding.” (p. 4)
 FAITH DEVELOPMENT RESEARCH 105

sertation Abstracts International, but also some other search engines, well over 100
dissertations could be located for which Fowler’s faith development theory consti-
tuted at least a significant position (Streib, 2003a). Out of this number, almost 90
dissertations focus primarily or exclusively on Fowler’s faith development theory.
Although a third of these Fowler dissertations discuss Fowler’s theory and some
10% deal with application of faith development theory in religious education, pas-
toral care, and church work, the majority of these dissertations are empirical stud-
ies. I found 53 empirical studies in faith development, published in dissertations
and articles up to the year 2001, that all use a faith development instrument—either
in its classical form according to the Manual (29 studies), in a variation of this in-
strument (16 studies), or in a scale-type form (8 studies).

Replication of the “Classical” Faith Development Interview

The faith development interview according to the Manual (1986, or 1993) was
used in more than half of the empirical studies (Backlund, 1990; Bassett, 1985;
Bradley, 1983; Broun, 1984; Chirban, 1981; Chychula, 1995; Drewek, 1996;
Driedger, 1998; Farc, 1999; Furushima, 1983; Gardin, 1997; Grossman, 1991;
Haggray, 1993; Hamrick, 1988; Hitchens, 1988; Howlett, 1989; Johnson, 1989;
Kalam, 1981; Leary, 1988; Lee, 1999; Mischey, 1976; Moseley, 1978; Shulik,
1979; Snarey, 1991; Spencer, 1996; Tulloch, 1985; Vanden Heuvel, 1985;
Vergouwen, 2001; White, 1985). Some studies are applications of the faith devel-
opment instrument in the analysis of specific groups, such as people dealing with
HIV diagnosis, chemical dependency, or the loss of a relative. Cross-cultural stud-
ies and research focusing on women’s religious development put the faith develop-
ment instrument to the test. Other studies use the faith development instrument to-
gether with other measures and could be labeled correlational studies. One goal of
such correlation is to test whether two or more theoretical and methodological per-
spectives may complement each other. But most of these replication studies focus
primarily on structure and offer no decisive modification of the research method.

Scale Construction for Measuring Faith Development

Quantitative faith development measurements and scales (Barnes, Doyle, & John-
son, 1989; Canavan, 1999; Clore, 1997; Green & Hoffman, 1989; Hammond, 1993;
Hiebert, 1993; Leak, Louks, & Bowlin, 1999; Swensen, Fuller, & Clements, 1993)
promise a less time-consuming procedure and open the possibility that data on faith
development could be correlated easily with other scales such as on personality fac-
tors, well-being, or fundamentalism. There is, however, no coherent and homoge-
neous faith development scale construction, but six different proposals:

1. The instrument developed by Green and Hoffman (1989) was a newly for-
mulated series of questions reflecting what the authors assumed to be compatible
106 STREIB

with the questions in the Fowler research tradition. These questions do not meet
the standards of faith development research because they reflect a closed Christian
worldview and because they pose very sophisticated and self-reflective questions.
Their instrument has never been used in research again.
2. The Fowler Scale by Barnes, Doyle, and Johnson (1989) was the first scale
to receive some attention and has been re-used in research (Gillan, 2001; James &
Samuels, 1999). The Fowler Scale is a short nine-item measure and was con-
structed for Fowler’s Stages Two through Five. For this scale, we have only initial
evidence of validity; issues of reliability have not been addressed (Timpe, 1999). It
is not perfectly clear what the scores really mean (cf. Leak et al., 1999, p. 106).
Further, answering the items requires some previous logical reflection by the inter-
viewee (Timpe, 1999). Finally, like the scale of Green and Hoffman, the Fowler
Scale of Barnes et al. cannot be used among non-Christians (cf. Timpe, 1999).
3. Swenson, Fuller, and Clements (1993) developed the Stages of Faith Scale
in order to measure faith development in an empirical study about the impact of
terminal cancer on the lives of patients and their spouses as a function of the stage
of faith. This scale was subsequently used in Canavan’s (1999) dissertation. This
scale is a very brief five-question selection from the Manual. It leaves out impor-
tant dimensions of the Manual entirely, such as the entire section on relationships
(significant others, parents), the openness to value commitments beyond the indi-
vidual, specific aspects of religion (prayer, death, sin), and crises and peak experi-
ences beyond the experiences of hope and faith. It is too brief and has not been
tested for validity.
4. Hiebert (1993) developed and tested a 48-item scale that is significantly
more comprehensive than the earlier scales. He used it for data collection by means
of a mail survey of a sample of 796 freshmen and senior students. He presents the
scale as a validated alternative to Fowler’s interview. However, in agreement with
Canavan’s (1999) judgment, it is questionable that Hiebert’s scale has achieved
“adequate standards of validity and reliability” (p. 34). In part, the questions from
Hiebert’s scale have been included in Clore’s (1997) scale composition.
5. Clore (1997) constructed an original psychometric measure that he tested in
a sample of 509 participants and used again in a more recent study (Clore & Fitz-
gerald, 2002). This scale has 30 items and is thus more comprehensive than the
earlier scales. Nevertheless, it deviates from the classical faith development instru-
ment because the questions address themes from Fowler’s interview (such as au-
thority issues, meaning of death, significance of rituals) somewhat selectively. It
also would require more testing for validity and reliability before it could be
widely used in future research.
6. The Faith Development Scale, a short eight-item scale developed by Leak
and his group, is the most recent development of a brief instrument for quantitative
research in faith development. Leak et al. (1999; Leak, 2003) present results of
studies to evidence validity. However, this scale also has a narrow focus on Chris-
 FAITH DEVELOPMENT RESEARCH 107

tian belief systems; people from new religions or non-Christian participants would
not find their views represented well in this instrument. The style in which the
questions are formulated elicits rather self-reflective statements.
Taken together, the construction of scales for measuring faith development is an
unfinished project. Certainly, Burris (1999) is right that “quickening the empirical
pace is a vital task” (p. 166) for future research in faith development. But besides
developing new scales and putting them through thorough testing for reliability
and validity, consistency with Fowler’s conceptualization deserves special atten-
tion. Because of the increasing variety of religious and new religious orientations
within our societies and the need for inter-religious and cross-cultural research in a
globalizing world, a faith development scale construction should not narrow the
wide-angle focus on faith that has been Fowler’s concern in his conceptualization
of faith development from the very beginning.
We have, however, still enough reason to consider other proposals for a research
variation that advance the qualitative approach. With an exclusive quantitative pro-
cedure, the dimensions that are neglected in the classical procedure of faith devel-
opment research would have almost no chance of being recovered and reinte-
grated. This is especially true for narrativity and content. But also the identification
of cross-Aspect and intra-Stage diversity is more difficult to investigate, especially
with brief scales.

Other Variations of Research in Faith Development

There have been a number of proposals for further modification of the faith devel-
opment research instrument. Two early studies have been focusing on selected As-
pects of the faith development perspective, such as Locus of Authority (Lansdell,
1980) or Symbolic Function (Sweitzer, 1984). For classroom research (Nipkow,
Schweitzer, Faust-Siehl, & Krupka, 1996), Fowler’s evaluation method has been
combined with other perspectives such as Oser’s (Oser & Gmünder,1984). Some
proposals have sought to modify the instrument more creatively (Hoffman, 1994;
Rose, 1991).
Looking for a briefer measure than the faith development interview, Rose
(1991) developed a new method to investigate faith development in large samples:
a four story instrument. This pencil-and-paper instrument is rather close to a scale
construction. It consists of the presentation of four brief story-like imaginary situa-
tions (your doctor tells you, father of two children, that after 8 years of smoking,
you have terminal cancer; you learn that your marriage counselor is being di-
vorced; you feel that your professional work with children is very exhaustive and
leading to a burn-out situation; a symbol has been vandalized) and then asks to re-
spond to about 20 questions relating to these stories on a Likert-type scale. Each
answer is associated with one of Fowler’s Stages Two through Five and computed
respectively. Rose’s claim that preliminary reliability estimates appear reasonable
108 STREIB

is inconclusive,9 also his way to judge validity by using the stage estimates of the
pastor is highly questionable. Furthermore, Rose does not present an argument
supporting his alignment of the questionnaire responses with Fowler’s faith stages.
Although one can assume that he has invested some reflection on this, it appears
that Rose has developed his own version of faith development theory which, how-
ever, remains rather implicit. Rose’s instrument is creative in that it introduces a
story stimulus approach into faith development research that brings him close to
the dilemma research method in moral development research; however, the neces-
sity and advantage of this innovation remains unclear. The only advantage of
Rose’s development lies in its potential for saving time and money.
When further improved and tested for validity, the instrument variation of Rose
(1991)—or that of Hoffman (1994), who has developed a Faith Development Es-
say Instrument (FDEI)—may be considered in further research. However, neither
of the instruments presents an advancement with regard to the project of revising
the faith development instrument to become more comprehensive, because they do
not move beyond structural analysis and do not include dimensions such as content
or life history. Therefore, we will turn to the studies that have pursued such inclu-
sion of dimensions that are not incorporated in the classical faith development re-
search procedure, and thus make use of narrative analysis (Anderson, 1995; Mor-
gan, 1990a; Nahavandi, 1999; Smith, 1997) or types of content analysis (Bolen,
1994; Cowden, 1992; Marcato, 2000; Morgan, 1990b; Pender, 2000; Rael, 1995;
Watt, 1997).

ACCOUNTING FOR CONTENT DIVERSITY

Contributions to Content Analysis in Faith Development

Research
The problem of the relation of structure and content in faith development theory
and research has not come to a conclusion because of Fowler’s own discussion of
the issue in Stages of Faith. Entire dissertations or at least chapters have been dedi-
cated to this problem, discussing the topic primarily from theoretical perspectives.
Some more recent contributions decide this question less in theory discussion than
in the design of empirical research by including content analysis into their faith de-
velopment research projects—which, however, has been labeled differently.
Names vary between “qualitative” approach (Rael, 1995), “phenomenological
hermeneutical” approach (Pender, 2000), “Grounded Theory” approach (Bolen,
1994), or “thematic analysis” (Watt, 1997). Watt, for example, has used the ques-
9Reliability estimates for the four stages assessed in a sample of 371 participants were as follows:

.75 for the Mythic-Literal scale, .16 for the Synthetic-Conventional scale, .78 for the Individuative-Re-
flective scale, and .19 for the Conjunctive scale.
 FAITH DEVELOPMENT RESEARCH 109

tions from the Manual to structure a focus group discussion and elicit responses
that are then “analyzed by themes” by the interviewer herself and another qualita-
tive auditor (p. 86f, 109f.). Bolen, in his analysis of five case studies, has used a
Grounded Theory approach that seems to be methodologically sound, but very
time-consuming, because the content dimensions have been identified without the
help of computer assistance. Two content-analytic projects should be discussed in
more detail, one of which has incorporated a kind of “several-reading content anal-
ysis” (Cowden, 1992), the other a computer-assisted Grounded Theory type
method (Marcato, 2000).
Cowden (1992) has developed a method of content analysis based on adapta-
tions of Gilligan’s and Fowler’s approaches. This content-analytic approach is di-
vided into several “readings”: a reading in which the evaluator seeks an under-
standing of the overall narrative in the interview; a reading focusing on themes that
are present throughout the interview and can be categorized; a reading of moral di-
lemma situations that may display moral orientations of care or justice; and finally,
a reading that analyzes the faith stage with respect to Fowler’s seven Aspects of
faith. Despite the fact that the number of “readings” should be discussed in more
detail, Cowden’s research strategy of restricting structural faith development anal-
ysis to one reading and introducing content analysis in faith development research
is a helpful suggestion and should be considered in our search for a new faith de-
velopment research design, which should eventually use computer assistance but
definitely include a focus on content analysis.
Cowden has investigated the faith development of 10 American Baptist
clergywomen, 5 African American and 5 White, ranging in age from 30 to 45.
Cowden found that in five of the women morality of care was predominant, four
had a predominant orientation of justice, and one an integration of the two
moral orientations. In a further evaluative step, Cowden determined that the
women’s different moral orientations are expressed in different faith language
and that the women represent three different stages in Fowler’s theory. It can be
seen as the most provoking result in Cowden’s study that she identified two dif-
ferent moral orientations in the five women at Stage Four: “Three of the women
at Stage Four evidenced a moral orientation of justice, whereas the other two
reflected a care orientation” (p. 132). Cowden concludes that “the results of
this research would suggest that in order to obtain a fuller understanding of the
dynamic process of faith development in women, Fowler’s theory would have
to accommodate insights from Gilligan’s theory of moral development in order
to adequately portray the faith development process in women’s experience”
(p. 143). Cowden’s research would not have been possible without content
analysis.
Marcato (2000) investigated the faith, spirituality, and concepts of religion
among Generation X Roman Catholics and sought “a greater understanding of the
experiences of God among this generation in order to determine whether the gen-
110 STREIB

eration is experiencing a crisis of faith, a struggle in cultivating spirituality, or

abandoning religion” (p. VI). In terms of method, Marcato has introduced new av-
enues: the data of 30 Xers were collected through interviews and drawings. For the
verbal data, Marcato used the questions from the Manual and also Rizzuto’s
(1979) God Questionnaire. The interviews were coded and categorized. Through
the Constant Comparative Method (Bogdan & Biklen, 1992), common themes
could be identified and the frequency of certain themes within and across the inter-
views could emerge (p. 40).
Despite limitations in regard to her sampling method and the restriction to the
Roman Catholic Generation X, Marcato’s research indicates that the faith develop-
ment instrument has great potential for eliciting content-specific data about a per-
son’s faith that can be organized in computer-assisted content analysis.

Methodological Proposal for Content Analysis in Faith

Development
These modifications of the faith development research instrument with a stron-
ger focus on the content dimension are inspiring. Content analysis should be
considered as an advancement and be included in subsequent research. However,
the research design in Cowden’s, but especially in Marcato’s, projects tend to
put structural analysis into the background, results emerge predominantly from
the focus on content analysis—either in the form of various readings or in a
computer-assisted procedure. What is lacking in these proposals is a more con-
vincing methodical account for the relationship between the content dimension
and the structural dimension.
The hypothesis of the “structuring power of the contents of faith,” to use
Fowler’s (1981, p. 273; passim) terms—or, to phrase it less ambitiously, as-
sumptions about the content affinity of the developmental structures—has not
yet been redeemed in empirical method. This is our project here. We have rea-
son to assume that, not only in the individual interview, but also across the in-
terviews of a certain sample, the styles of faith and their development corre-
spond to specific contents and beliefs, such as images of God or the Ultimate,
symbolic expressions about God’s relation to oneself and humanity, beliefs
about personal and human destiny, interpretations of experiences and contin-
gencies, moral implications for the individual, religious community and hu-
manity, to name a few.
The methodical procedure (see the summary in Table 1) should thus include a
second step in addition to structural analysis: The contents must be coded using
content-analytic approaches. Then the two kinds of codes can be correlated. Com-
puter programs allow for such two-dimensional coding and for establishing a rela-
tionship between the two dimensions.
 FAITH DEVELOPMENT RESEARCH 111

ACCOUNTING FOR NARRATIVE DIVERSITY

Regard for the Narrativity of Faith in Faith Development

Research
Regarding the narrative structure of the life history, faith development research
claims to pay due attention. The Manual aims to include the socio-historical condi-
tions and their impact on the narrative structure of self-understanding and there-
fore appreciates the fact that the interviews yield data on the individual’s life his-
tory. This importance of life history is also claimed for evaluation; the Manual
(1986) presents a resolute statement: “When abstracted from the context of life
history such ‘scores’ are meaningless. … Faith development theory takes seriously
the narrative structure of life history” (pp. 2–3). Certainly, life history is important
to faith development theory and research. The entire project of faith development
theory consists of telling developmental stories, of recognizing these developmen-
tal stories in the interviews. In other words, research is meant to reconstruct the de-
velopmental narrative from the interviewee’s reflective and narrative responses in
terms of the structural-developmental theory. Furthermore, for the classical faith
development research procedure, the Manual suggests a decisive step toward an
inclusion of an interviewee’s life history, the Life Tapestry Exercise, in which the
interviewee is asked to divide his or her life into chapters and to note events, crises,
images of God, and so forth, in a table. The inclusion of the Life Tapestry Exercise
is an indication of the tendency to ascribe increased importance to life history. This
may even pave the way toward investing the domain of the narrative of a respon-
dent’s life story with the degree of importance it deserves in the evaluation proce-
dure for the interview material. When we read the present Manual’s instructions
for the raters, however, we learn that the Life Tapestry Exercise is “optional,” and
that it is “not coded directly”—although regarded as a useful source of background
information for the coding process.

Contributions to a Narrative Approach in Faith Development

Research
The transcribed text of the interview contains a rich narrative representation of the
interviewee’s life history and developmental history. This invites narrative analysis
and the development of specific evaluation procedures. Some more recent empiri-
cal projects have gone in this direction and should be considered before a proposal
for a more systematic narrative analysis in faith development research is presented.
Three empirical projects using a narrative approach are of limited value for a revi-
sion of the faith development research procedure, but are summarized briefly, be-
fore a more promising research design will be reviewed.
112 STREIB

E. F. Morgan (1990a) applied a proposed narrative scale model, containing

eight stages (early religious experiences, drifting, exile, indifference, “stasis,” re-
awakening, rapprochement, and integration), which is a combination of a rather
broad collection of approaches, narrative critical research methods, theological in-
quiry, developmental psychology, theories of aging, and faith development, as well
as ethnographic methods. A similar broad and rather intuitive approach has been
developed by Anderson (1995); she characterized her interpretive method as “de-
scriptive narrative research.” The interviews were evaluated in a series of readings,
searching for narrative structures according to Bruner (1987) and Lakoff & John-
son (1980). Finally, Smith (1997) announced the goal of developing a grounded
theory about the faith and professional development of women religious leader-
ship through qualitative research on the stories of women religious leaders from
the past and the present using narrative analysis. However, Smith gave no clear ac-
count of the method of narrative analysis she used and presented a kind of system-
atization of the various stories of women religious leaders and illustrated the com-
mon themes with many quotes from the interviews. Also this “whirlpool”
approach—the author’s own final characterization of a “model”—did not suggest
any theoretical or methodological advancement for research in faith development.
Nahavandi (1999) presents two integrative case studies of elderly persons. For
these case studies, she demonstrates the advantage of compiling the faith develop-
ment interview with McAdams’s (1993) Identifying Personal Myth Interview Pro-
tocol, thus creating a new research instrument that intends to increase awareness of
how the spiritual dimensions of the elderly may bring forth greater understanding
of communities and societies. Nahavandi reports that the combination of the two
interview models brought forth greater, more in-depth, and more complete under-
standing of her participants, especially regarding the complex and multifaceted
world of the elderly, their spirituality, and their faith, from the perspective of the
narrative theory of personality development. Two case studies are by no means a
large sample. Nevertheless, Nahavandi’s compilation of the two research protocols
is inspiring because it may show a way to approach both personal mythology and
faith development in a research design, thereby integrating a narrative approach
into faith development research.

Methodological Proposal for Narrative Analysis of Faith

Development
Narrative analysis opens the door for taking account of the interviewee’s own nar-
ration of his or her developmental trajectory. It is important to note thereby that the
narrative in the interview text yields access to the dynamics of latent structures be-
low the conscious reflective statements of the interviewee about his or her past.
The narrativity of the interview text allows us to access a biographical depth di-
mension. In addition to the synchronic dimension of a person’s present state of
 FAITH DEVELOPMENT RESEARCH 113

faith development that we are used to identifying in the analysis of the responses in
the interview, narrative analysis brings the diachronic dimension into view. Fur-
thermore, the interviewee’s narratives present the biographical integration by
which the narrator has more or less successfully attempted to come to terms with
past experiences that, may they be traumatic or exciting, may have required some
biographical psycho-hygienic type of work.
The narrative in the interview is, in the first place and on first sight of the text, of
course, the narrator’s own narrative reconstruction of his or her development, and
thoughtful methodological steps are necessary to reconstruct the interviewee’s own
more or less conscious subjective theory from the interpreter’s (foreign) analytical
perspective.10 Schütze’s (1981, 1983, 1984) methodological approach—which sug-
gests demarcating narrative segments and further distinguishing narrative supra- and
subsegments—gives the interpreter the freedom to reconstruct and possibly rear-
range the interviewee’s story in a new way. This perspective is most adequate for
narrative interviews in the proper sense in which we invite the interviewee to tell his
or her story and continue telling until the story has come to an end in his or her per-
ception. However, we find many narrative segments in almost all of the interviews,
even if they are “semi-structured” by the faith development interview questions.
These narrative segments, when highlighted and (re-) arranged, present, at least in
part, the person’s narrative. The interpretative task of reconstructing a story line or
plot is the first and foremost task of narrative analysis. The reconstruction of the type
of narrative dynamics in a specific interview then allows for a contrasting compari-
son with other narratives. From this contrastive comparison, certain narrative-struc-
tural similarities or contrasts come to the interpreter’s attention. The final result of
narrative analysis is a typological chart in which the individual biographical trajec-
tory can be located in a typological field.11
Our project here, however, is an integration of narrative analysis with developmen-
tal analysis—which, according to the methodological proposal in the previous sec-
tions, combines the classical structural-developmental analysis with content analysis.
The important step we must take in order to combine the structural, the content-spe-
cific, and the narrative-analytic dimensions is the evaluation of each narrative segment
in terms of structural and content-specific style, that is, the assignment of labels indi-
cating a style or stage code of the narrative segment thereby focusing on the story told,
rather than on the way of telling. This way, we may obtain a faith development profile
of the (reconstructed) course of the person’s biographical development.

10See also Chapter 10 in my dissertation (Streib, 1991) where I propose a methodological perspec-

tive in reference to the work of Ricoeur.

11For this step in narrative analysis, the works of McAdams (1990, 1993; McAdams, Josselson, &

Lieblich, 2001) are inspiring.

114 STREIB

CONCLUSION: FAITH DEVELOPMENT RESEARCH

REVISITED

The Religious Styles Perspective

The proposed advancements of research in faith development integrate well with,
and are inspired by, a new perspective on the structural-developmental theory of reli-
gion that is a modification of James Fowler’s faith development theory, the typology
of religious styles (Streib, 2001a).12 This revision is aimed at accounting more fully
for the life history and life-world relatedness of religion at its principal interactive,
interpersonal origin and shape. Thus, the phenomenologists Merleau-Ponty’s and
Ricoeur’s philosophical perspectives, Noam’s developmental perspective basing
upon interpersonality, as well as Rizzuto’s view of the psychodynamic development
of religion play a significant role for the reformulation.
The religious styles perspective is able to provide an explanation of fundamen-
talist orientations and turns that the structural-developmental theories of religious
or faith development have not been able to provide because their framework can-
not account for regression, or the kind of partial regression onto, or revival of, ear-
lier rigid or do-ut-des styles. The cognitive-structural theories of development in
their traditional form of structural, hierarchical, sequential, and irreversible logic
of development result from an all too optimistic interpretation of the project of
modernity. If left unchanged, they cannot provide us with an explanatory frame-
work for understanding fundamentalism and individual fundamentalist revivals.
Fundamentalism is a special and outstanding instance, but only one instance, of
the more general complexity of faith trajectories that includes the possible pres-
ence of more than one style in a person’s life. There is reason to call into question
the assumption of a “structural whole” in faith development—and implement this
view in the research method.

Consequences: The Revised Research Strategy in Faith

Development
For future faith development research, a coherent and consistent improvement of the
qualitative instrument is essential. Thereby, the inclusion of narrative approaches and
the accounting for content dimensions hold the greatest promise for a significant inno-
vation. As detailed earlier, a series of empirical studies have already moved in this di-
rection and included a narrative approach; others have opted for a content-analytical
design. However, these creative new research designs tend toward throwing out the
12In the article (Streib, 2001a), an overview of religious styles is presented and illustrated in a figure

(p. 150).
 FAITH DEVELOPMENT RESEARCH 115

baby with the bathwater by favoring narrative or content analysis at the cost of the
structural dimension. A decidedly integrative and consistent approach is desirable.
If we cannot exclude the possibility that more than one style is present simulta-
neously within one and the same orientation of a person, as the religious styles per-
spective suggests, then we must adjust the research method to this expectation in
order to at least assure that we account for the potential diversity of styles. The fun-
damentalist revival of earlier styles may be but one of the most obvious instances
of such a mix and mingle of styles. We must account for cross-domain differences
and for diversity within one stage or style of faith.
Thus a conclusion from the methodological proposals of the previous sections
suggests a significant revision of research procedure in faith development research.
The connection between two of the evaluative dimensions, structure and content, has
already been indicated here. However, all three dimensions, structure, content, and
narrativity, need to be included and integrated in a procedure. It is the concluding
proposal of this article that the evaluation of a faith development interview should
proceed in three steps. This could be accomplished by three consequent readings, or,
in computer-assisted research, in three different types of codes (see Table 1).
Through a combination of all three codings, a more comprehensive and co-
herent image of the interviewee’s faith and faith development emerges. The rich-
ness of coding suggests systematizing and charting the relationship between
structural codes and content codes. This would result in a map-like portrait of
structure-content assignments—which may allow not only for inferences about
the content-specific character of this person’s faith structure(s), but also for an
analysis of the internal consistency of the person’s faith style(s), or for differ-
ences, contradictions, and revivals, respectively. The narrative-analytical seg-
mentation and reconstruction allows us to place these findings in the diachronic
relief of the participant’s life history, as reconstructed from the interviewee’s
own narration. Finally, in form of a map or table, these results provide most in-
spiring data for writing a case study and for locating the individual case in a
typology of biographical trajectories.
A revision of faith development research is both necessary and possible.
Notwithstanding the need for a solid faith development scale construction, the
proposal here is primarily concerned with the advancement of the qualitative
research design to which faith development research has been inclined from
the start. Although the possibility and direction of such revision has been dem-
onstrated in a number of creative design variations in previous faith develop-
ment research, a coherent procedure has been missing that is able to integrate
attention to structural, narrative, and content diversity. The proposed proce-
dure, through its methodological triangulation of structure, content, and
narrativitiy, may yield a better portrait of the variety and complexity of peo-
ple’s faith development.
116 STREIB

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