51-5 A Study on the Construction and Development of Karma Belief Scale for Undergraduate in Taiwan
| Ming-Chang Tsai | |
| National Chiayi University |
Karma belief is the critical view point of Taiwanese in the situation of ethical decision and suffering. For life education and school counselling, karma belief has the important implications. However, there is neither measurement of karma belief that base on the culture, nor systematic examination in karma belief of Taiwanese. Base on above，the main purpose of this present study was to construct the contents of karma belief, develop a measurement of karma belief for college students in Taiwan, investigate the karma belief of native undergraduate, and understand the profile of karma belief of undergraduate in Taiwan. In order to reach the purpose, the researcher used the methods of literature discussion, interview and survey, constructed the contents of karma belief by the examination of traditional culture and interview, selected undergraduate to be the empirical research subjects. The formal Karma Belief Scale (KBS) consists of 28 items, and divided into seven dimensions. Subjects were sampled by the way of stratified multi-stage sampling. A sample of 1158 college students was recruited to finish the Karma Belief Scale. In order to examine the reliability of Karma Belief Scale, the way of test-retest reliability and Cronbach's alpha reliability were used. The Exploratory factor analysis and Confirmatory factor analysis was calculated to check the validity of Karma Belief Scale. The result of this study showed the reliability and validity of Karma Belief Scale was generally well. The undergraduate in Taiwan to tend to believe the beliefs of ‘retribution in this life’, ‘afterlife retribution’, ‘retribution in descendant’ and ‘create destiny’. However, the undergraduate in Taiwan have the tendency of rejecting the beliefs of ‘offset of good and evil’, ‘religious redemption’ and ‘accept destiny’. The relationship between religious faith and karma belief was significant. The students who without any religious faith had the less beliefs in all dimension of Karma Belief Scale. The Christian students had lower score in the dimension of ‘retribution in descendant’, ‘offset of good and evil’, ‘accept destiny’ and ‘create destiny’ than the students who had the religious faith of Buddhism, Taoism, I-Kuan Tao and Folk belief. The difference of karma belief between male and female undergraduate in Taiwan was significant. The female undergraduate had higher acceptation in the dimension of ‘retribution in this life’, ‘afterlife retribution’, ‘retribution in descendant’ and ‘create destiny’ than male undergraduate. The male had lower acceptation in the dimension of ‘offset of good and evil’, ‘religious redemption’. Finally, this present study discussed how to apply the result of this study to life education and school counseling. The karma belief has both advantages and disadvantages in the practice of life education and school counseling. In life education, the karma belief could be used to be the one of criteria in situation of ethical decision and in answer the question of ‘Why should I become a moral person?’ However, belief of karma may let students looking forward the external remuneration then could not to be autonomous, and lack the moral courage to criticize the violation. In school counseling, when people encounter the impermanence of life, they need a reasonable attribution instead of relief of suffering. So the karma belief could be the comfort when student in suffering, but the disadvantage of karma belief may just like the Karl Marx’s ridicule to religion, is the opium of the people, could let them hold the negative view of fatalism, don’t want work hard to deal with difficult, even the difficult is not really serious.
Keywords
Karma belief, karma belief scale, life education, school counselling, undergraduate.
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