Defining Traditional Students

Traditionalist students hold extreme views on the following items:

[In a controversial conversation, it has a positive effect when] participants respect official Catholic teaching.
[When I participate in a controversial conversation,] I respect official Catholic teaching.
[I agree that] at a Catholic university, the official teachings of the church should have a privileged place in conversations about controversial issues.
[I agree that] the Catholic identity of CSB/SJU makes it easier to have constructive conversations on controversial issues.
[I disagree that] the Catholic Church beyond CSB/SJU makes it more difficult to have good conversations on controversial issues.
[I disagree that] abortion should be legal.
[I disagree that] same-sex couples should have the right to legal marital status.
[I disagree that] the Catholic Church should ordain women.
We found a high degree of correlation among these items, with a Cronbach’s alpha of .811. Traditionalist students scored more than one standard deviation above the mean on a composite of these items. Anti-traditionalists scored more than one standard deviation below the mean.