Some initial results from the improved charismatic test

I thought I would share some results since I improved the charismatic spectrum test. It definitely isn’t labeling everyone as a charismatic any more. Since the rewrite we have had:

• 3% strong doctrinal cessationists who all are also experiential cessationists
• 7% mild doctrinal cessationists who are all experiential cessationists
• 24% mild doctrinal charismatics, approximately 50% of whom were experiential cessationists
• The rest were all strong charismatics around 5% of whom still scored as cessationists

So it is still the case that the vast majority of responders are coming out as charismatics doctrinally. I need your help to answer a question, is it that most of my readers are now charismatics because I have frightened away the cessationists? Or, is the test still labeling people too readily as charismatic?

If you did the test early on and thought it labelled you as too charismatic, can you have another look please? Also, if you know any cessationists who would be willing to run the test for me that would be helpful.

At the moment what we are looking for is whats called “face validity” i.e. I am trying to produce a test which seems to both charismatics and cessationists to discriminate between them appropriately.

Why do I do this? It is primarily so we can all understand what each other actually believe and so hopefully not caricature and reject each other unnecessarily.

Another form of validity is to look at how individual items correlate with others. I have not done any statistical tests on the results so far, but I should say that although on the improved test none of the doctrinal items are being ticked “yes” by everyone, the following ones still have relatively few “no”‘s. Do you think that any of them could be improved (in terms of making a cessationist less likely to say yes to them) or are should any of them be considered for being dropped altogether?

Items which only relatively few people so far seem to disagree with:

• I believe that God invites us to pursue an ever deeper personal relationship with him
• I believe that worship should be passionate and emotive
• I believe that the presence of God can be felt during corporate worship
• I believe that God heals supernaturally today in response to prayer