The Development of a Questionnaire for the Objective Measurement of Belief or Knowledge Motivation i.S. an Intrapsychic Behavioral Guide

The self-developed psychological test instrument: Questionnaire for recording a Beliefsystem (FEB) is a selfevaluation questionnaire with 14 items. With the help of this questionnaire the individual, latent, inner attitude mata, a kind of motive in the sense of “need to know” or “want to believe” should be determined. On the basis of the results of theFactor analyses, theFactor correlations and the reliability calculations, we can state, according to the criteria of classical test theory, that theFEB is a test which is also capable of measuring the theoretical constructs mentioned above in a valid and reliable manner.


Introduction
In order to find out why anxious and/or depressed people need to know, rather than believe, why they would be able to do so mentally but do not, it is important to develop an instrument that measures something like an inner cognitive schema or central need (motivation) validly and reliably.
The development of a questionnaire which on the one hand measures something like faith in the sense of an intrapsychic behavioural instruction, comparable to an inner need or an individual motivation to act and on the other hand must have knowledge as an alternative to it, turned out to be quite difficult, since the definitions of faith and knowledge could not be clearly determined from an epistemological point of view or scientific knowledge.
With the term "faith" there are no clear scientific statements about what "faith" is. To date, science has owed an exact definition, or operationalization, of this term. But here also no scientifically correct statements and definitions of faith are to be presented and discussed, that would go beyond the scope. In addition, this is about the development of a measuring instrument. It is only about a short representation of faith as the ability and/or willingness of man to create, move or change things in himself and his power. Cf  But it makes sense to give a few simple explanations about the terms to be measured with the test procedure at this point.

General Meaning of Faith
In common parlance, believing means believing a fact to be true. This is a presumption, an assumption of which an individual is convinced without realistically examining the facts of the case, but which can be modified on the basis of experience and new findings by means of a subjunctive link. This kind of inner conviction implies a trust in an or a sentence without doubting the truth. It thus represents a subjective decision based on an emotionally perceived certainty.
In general, people only believe in what they do not know explicitly, i.e. where they are uncertain. Here faith always presupposes a degree of ignorance, a possibility to err.
The proverbs: "Faith means knowing nothing", or "Trust is good, control is better" are still frequently used in everyday language today. As wise as these statements may seem a priori, they misjudge the true character of these concepts, because they imply that faith means only to assume something or to blindly believe something to be true.
In the scientific sense, faith is usually regarded as a special form of a probabilistic construct. This means that scientists assume that what they believe in can become true over time, but does not have to become true. It is therefore a matter which has not yet been proven in the scientific sense and which must first be proven, or which cannot be proven at all. Explicitly, this form of faith is an assumption, a hypothesis that is confirmed or rejected according to the criteria of verification and/or falsification. As already explained above, "belief" in the sense of epistemology means the advocacy of one's own convictions or perceptions. The resume from the resulting does not necessarily require a logical derivation in the epistemological sense. Insted, it is a subjective interpretation of the reality that surrounds us, which does not require any objective, scientific justification.

General Meaning of Knowledge
In colloquial terms, knowledge is primarily understood to mean an ability to deal with reality, e.g. to have some knowledge, developed through learning and practice of what has been learnt. In other words, knowledge also means the recognition of the connections between everyday, subjective and objective facts and actions. Here knowledge is understood primarily as a true and justified opinion.
Within philosophy there is no agreement on an exact definition of the term "knowledge". This disagreement is the logical, consistent consequence within Western attempts at epistemological explanation, because in this philosophical approach the term knowledge was linked with the term truth.
The conflict between a priori knowledge (42,43) and empirical knowledge 44 which is always mentioned in this context, points to the centuries-long conflict. For Plato there existed a knowledge, independent of sensory perceptions, which was exclusively acquired by logical derivations in deductive reasoning. A rationalist was therefore someone who "attaches more importance to pure thought for knowledge than to experience" 45. This rationalist approach to the definition of knowledge found its most important advocate in René Descartes in rationalism. He already separated strictly between the empiricism of the "res extensia" and the "res cogitans" of the spiritual. The philosopher Arendt summed up that such a Cartesian juxtaposition of a "res cogitans" of man and a "res extensia" of the world surrounding him was incurable 46 Also the later philosophies (Critical Rationalism and Logical Empirism cf. (47,48), in German 2007, and the works of (49,50,51,52,53) or the philosophers of the Vienna Circle: Moritz Schlick, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Rudolf Carnap, Bertram Russell and Ernst Mach, in: 54 But also the findings of constructivism and logical constructivism see (55, 56, 57, 58, 59 60, 61, 62, 63, 64) did not bring an unambiguous and clear scientific definition of the term "knowledge".

The Item Development
Because there are no clear scientific definitions of the terms "faith" or "knowledge" to date, items have been developed that have been used in colloquial usage, in the form of proverbs, from everyday life. Like, for example: "Faith moves mountains," or "knowledge is power." Through several years of psychotherapeutic experience in dealing with anxious and depressed patients, it could be established that faith no longer seemed to play any role für this clientele, let alone any function for a consciously chosen problem solving strategy. Instead, this clientele emphasized time and again that believing in sonething had never helped them in their way of life. I On the contrary, they would only associate faith with bad experiences (losses, insults and disappointments).
According to these people, "control is better than trust". "Faith is for children, the don't have to know everything." When asked why knowledge was more important to them than faith, most responded that knowledge was synonymous with "assumptions", "naivety", or "helplessness".
Through an analysis of the reason for the rejction of faith, as opposed to the clear preference for knowledge, it was possible, at least partially, to define the meaning of these terms for this group of people somewhat more clearly. Based on this understandig, further test items were developed which could also be able to measure thes terms. Using well-known proverbs like: "Trust is good, control is better", "knowledge is power" or "faith moves mountains", 14 different items were formulated. To what extent the statement of the individual item corresponds or does not correspond to the individual pattern of thinking or behaviour could the test persons choose between 4 answer categories: "not true", "true something", "often true" and "always true". (seeFEB questionnaire in annex).

Testapproval
The self-evaluation questionnaire designed in this way was distributed to 150 Vpn (50 inconspicuous, 50 anxious and 50 depressive persons) and willingly completed by them in accordance with the instructions formulated in the test.

Statistical Test Analysis
In order to check whether this questionnaire measures something like a theoretical construct "Belief systems" as a personal decision basis in the sense of "can believe" or "must know" aFactor analysis with main component analysis as extraction method and with Varimax Kaiser normalization as rotation method was calculated. Absolute values below -.500 were not taken into account. TheFactor analysis was created using the SPSS program (version: 23.0) on the computer with Windows 7.

Results ofFactor Analyses and Regression Calculations
In order to be able to make a reliable statement about the theoretical construct "Belief Systems", i.e. about the validity of the test instruments, according to the classical test criteria, a 3-factor solution and a 2-factor solution were calculated (see Table 1). As can be seen from the table, the 3 Factors with the eigenvalues 5.210 (factor 1), 1.696 (factor 2) and 1.010 (factor 3) explain 60.893% of the total variance.
If we look at the following rotated component matrix with the individual items and theirFactor charges we can see that 6 items (No. 3, 4, 5, 10, 12 and 14) load on the 1 st Factor and that with very high charges. Which could mean that these questions measure something like "a motiv need knowledge" as a commonFactor. The "faith item" No. 11 also loads on the firstFactor, but negatively, which could mean that conversely knowledge would be more important than imagination. Items Nos. 2, 6, 7, 8 and 9 load on the 2 nd Factor, which, if one looks for a higher dimension for these different items, could measure something like a motive of faith. Only item no. 1 with the highestFactor charge (,837) loads on the 3 rd Factor. What thisFactor explicitly measures is difficult to answer due to the single item without becoming speculative. Maybe it is also because it is the only item that is formulated negatively and therefore loads on only oneFactor. (see Table 2) In order to clarify whether there is a relationship between the individualFactors or whether they are independent of each other, aFactor correlation was calculated according to Pearson. (see Table 3). This figure shows thatFactors 1 and 2 correlate highly significantly with each other, but negatively. This could mean that bothFactors measure something similar, but of different quality or educational level, perhaps something like a general motivational system, where knowledge or belief are only the different dimensions. The 3 rd Factor also correlates at the 0.01 significance level withFactor 1 but not withFactor 3 (-.160). However, if one calculates a correlation according to Spearman-Rho (nonparametric correlation), the 3 rd Factor also correlates with theFactor 2 (-,164) at a 0.05 level, but negatively. This could mean that item 1 may represent both dimensions, but in opposite quality.
Due to the fact that Item 1 loads on a singleFactor, no reliability could be calculated for thisFactor. That's why this Knowledge Motivation i.S. an Intrapsychic Behavioral Guide item was left out of the 2-factor solution. Item no. 11 was also taken into account in the 2-factor solution. Once it was calculated with item no. 11, once without the item. Both solutions are briefly presented (see Table 4). ThisFactor analysis explains 56.260% of the total variance with the twoFactors. With the corresponding rotated component matrix it can be seen that item no. 11, just as with the 3-factor solution, charges theFactor 1, but negatively and in comparison with the other items thisFactor, with the lowest charge (see Table 5). In the subsequent correlation ofFactors 1 and 2, it can also be seen that bothFactors correlate very strongly with each other, but negatively, just as in the 3-factor solution, even with the same coefficient (see Table 6). For the 2-factor solution without item no. 11, the followingFactor structure results (see Table 7). In this Factor analysis, the twoFactors explain 58.348% of the total variance As can also be seen from this rotated component matrix, the Factor charges have changed only minimally compared to the two previously calculatedFactor solutions. Also, as far as the correlation of the twoFactors is concerned, there is only a minimal difference between the correlation coefficients and the previous correlations. Here, too, bothFactors correlate highly significantly (-.473) at the 0.01 significance level. This leads to the conclusion that all 3 solutions do not differ significantly, and that the construct validity of this test instruments meets the requirements of classical test theory and can be described as very good (see table 8). If we split the questionnaire into two shorts questionaires with the respective itrems of the 2 differentFactors (items of knowledge or items of faith) and calculate a seperateFactor analysis for each, Factor 1 in this concrete case would even explain 62.550% andFactor 2 52,132% of the total variance (see tables 9 and 10).  As a summary of the results of the variousFactor solutions to date, we can state that the self-evaluation questionnaire (FEB) is a valid instrument that validly measures intraindividual, action-guiding persuasion schemes or motivation dimensions in the sense of "knowledge" and "belief".

Results of the Reliability Calculation
For the calculation of the reliability of the questionnaire, i.e. how well and reliably it measures this theoretical construct, the items are used that were also taken into account in the 2-factor solution (or Item No. 11). The following table shows that Cronbach's alpha for the complete questionnaire is .572. This value does not appear to be very high (see Table 11). However, if we look at the respective selectivity coefficients of the individual items, we can see that the items of the 2 nd Factor have a negative value and thus massively reduce the reliability of the questionnaire. For this reason, it seems reasonable to calculate the reliability of eachFactor (1+2) for itself (see Tables 12 and 13). When calculating the reliability for theFactor 1 we get a Cronbach's Alpha =.879. (see Table 12).
This coefficient can be described as particularly high. This means thatFactor 1 reliably measures the theoretical construct "knowledge" as schemata guiding action.
As can be seen from the table, the Cronbach's Alpha with .766 is also very good for the 2 nd Factor, which is a good indicator for the reliability of the 2 nd Factor i. H. on the criterion to be measured "faith" in the sense of an intraindividual, action guiding conviction (see table 13).

Summary and Interpretation of the
Test Theoretical Results of the Self-Developed Questionnaire (FEB)

Questioning
A specific questionnaire was developed in order to objectively record the different preferences for knowledge and belief. With the help of this questionnaire an individual, latent, inner attitude scheme, a kind of motive in the sense of "need to know" or "want to believe" should be determined. The items used were taken from common usage and subjected to a careful item analysis with regard to their selectivity.

Statistical Analysis Method
The validity of the test instrument was calculated by aFactor analysis with main component analysis as traction method and with Varimax Kaiser normalization as rotation method. A 3-and 2-factor solution was calculated, which respectively explain 60.893% and 58.348% of the total variance. Although the 3-factor solution has a minimally better explantion of the total variance, but the 3 rd Factor loads only on a single item, so that no reliability calculation could be carried out according to the principles of the classical test theory, an interpretation in favour of the 2-factor solution was dispensed with.
The 2-factor solution clearly has two independentFactors, each of which can be described as a Preference or motivation for knowledge (knowlwdgwFactor) and a motivation for faith (faithFactor). A conformation of this model can also foud in the% figures of the declared total variance in theFactor analyses of the individualFactors and results of theFactor correlations.
The reliability of the questionnaire for the recording of Beliefsystems (FEB) was calculated with the help of Cronbach's Alpha, once for the overall test and once for both test halves (knowledge items or faith items) separately. The reliability of the overall test is .572 which does not seem so high. On closer inspection, however, we can see that the faith items have negative discriminatory power coefficients and thus greatly reduce the reliability score of the overall test. In a separate calculation, particularly high or very good values were obtained for the Cronbach's alpha (cf. item scale statistics forFactor 1 (knowledge) Cronbach's alpha .879 and forFactor 2 (faith) equal to .766.
Due to the highly significant correlations or partial correlations with the standardised test procedures (BDI, BAI, SWSF and HAKI-S), FEB also has very good criterion validity. From a test theoretical point of view, the validity as well as the reliability of the test instrument with regard to an objective measurement of the two preferences (knowledge and belief) could thus be proven.
TheFEB is a useful, valid and reliable instrument for scientific research with regard to individual motivation to want to believe or to have to know. This questionnaire can be a good help for the scientific discussion and thus provide an empirical gain of knowledge.