Abstract
This chapter presents an introduction to the Faith Development Interview (FDI) and describes its background in Fowler ’s theory and research, explains the FDI questions and the evaluation procedure according to the Manual for Faith Development Research. Then this chapter introduces our more recent methodological modifications of the FDI evaluation procedure, which were applied in the Bielefeld-based Cross-cultural Study of “Spirituality” in which more than one hundred FDIs have been conducted and evaluated. Suggestions for the modification of the evaluation method include: taking into account the differences between the aspects of faith, more decisive attention to the wealth of narrative data and the various dimensions which the FDI questions elicit beyond the structural-developmental information, and finally the triangulation with questionnaire data.
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Notes
- 1.
We present the version of the FDI questions (follow-up questions are in brackets) as used in our current research. In this version, some questions, as they are presented in the Manual for Faith Development Research (also in the 3rd edition: Fowler, Streib, & Keller, 2004), have been slightly modified in order to be more inclusive in regard to the variety of religious traditions and worldviews; for example, in question 20, the adjectives “spiritual” and “faithful” have been added; or in question 4, “image of God and relation to God” has been exchanged by “world view” in the main question, and the phrase “image of God and the Divine” has been moved to a follow-up question.
- 2.
The interviews are transcribed verbatim and interacts are the single utterances of interviewer and interviewee (see Appendix B).
- 3.
With more than 500 FDIs (277 from the Deconversion Project, 102 from this Spirituality Study, ca. 150 with Muslim participants in Germany and Turkey), the Bielefeld Research Center for Biographical Studies in Contemporary Religion has the privilege of owning a considerable FDI data base (probably the largest in the world) with considerable cross-cultural and cross-religious diversity.
- 4.
A note on terminology: We use in this chapter and many other chapters of this book not only the term ‘style’, but also the term ‘stage.’ This is consistent with the Manual for Faith Development Research which was used for evaluation. But it is important to note that we associate with ‘stage’ not the entire set of structural-developmental assumptions, but rather understand ‘stage’ as synonymous with, or interpreted by, ‘style.’ Therefore, wherever possible and appropriate, we use both terms interchangeably or use both terms with a slash.
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Streib, H., Wollert, M., Keller, B. (2016). The Faith Development Interview: Methodological Considerations. In: Streib, H., Hood, Jr., R. (eds) Semantics and Psychology of Spirituality. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-21245-6_15
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