By:
Laura Lippman and Erik Michelsen
Child Trends
and
Eugene C. Roehlekepartain
Search Institute
Paper prepared for
Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation, HHS
for the contract, Indicators
of Child, Family, and Community Connections
(Contract no. HHS-100-01-0011 (05).)
This paper identifies some of the many studies that have linked the importance of religiosity to family functioning, child, youth, and family outcomes, and social networking. It also describes existing measures of family religiosity and spirituality in national surveys that can and have been used as indicators, as well as promising new measures from a recent survey. The paper outlines gaps and limitations in existing measures, and discusses important considerations for recommending new measures in this area. New measures are then recommended that are more inclusive of a wide range of religious expression and spirituality, and that portray religiosity within the context of families and their broader social context. Finally, the paper recommends additional analyses to shed light on the relationship of new measures to family outcomes, which may guide the future selection of measures to be developed into indicators.
American religious engagement has remained fairly constant for the past several decades, contrary to the claims that the processes of modernization and secularization would eventually reduce the interest in religious participation (Berger, 1999). The nature of religiosity has, however, changed over time, both as a function of the growing diversity of the religious communities in the United States, including the Muslim, Hindu, and Buddhist communities (Eck, 2001), as well as in the range of personal activities that constitute religiosity among individuals.
Religiosity has received significant attention as an indicator because it has been found to have complex associations with a variety of positive family outcomes. These relationships between religiosity and well-being have been measured at several different levels, including the parental-level (e.g., marital satisfaction) the family-level (e.g., parenting styles, intrafamilial conflict), and the child-level (e.g., youth outcomes).
Marriage. Several studies have examined the effects of religiosity on various outcomes related to marriage, such as marital satisfaction, marital conflict, divorce, marital stability and commitment, and cohabitation/marital outcomes among children of religious parents. Religiosity as measured by religious service attendance has been linked to higher levels of marital satisfaction, marital stability, less marital conflict, lower risk of divorce, and the probability of marriage among young adults (Johnson et al, 2002; Call and Heaton, 1997; Thornton, 1992). Other studies have found less clear relationships between religiosity and marital satisfaction (Sullivan, 2001; Booth et al, 1995). In their meta-analysis of studies of family religiosity, Mahoney, Pargament, Tarakeshwar, & Swank (2001) concluded that the results on the association of global measures of religious involvement with marital satisfaction are mixed, but they found evidence that personal religiosity (indicated by engagement in multiple spiritual practices) and religious commitment were linked to marital satisfaction and commitment, controlling for various demographic factors.
Parenting. Studies have linked religiosity with parenting styles and level of parental involvement. A wide variety of studies have examined the relationship between specific religious orientations and styles of parental discipline, use of corporal punishment, and related issues, with mixed results, suggesting the difficulty of associating particular religious ideological beliefs with specific parenting practices (Mahoney, Pargament, Tarakeshwar, & Swank, 2001). However, parental religiosity has been linked to greater involvement, warmth and positivity in parent-child relationships (Pearce & Axinn, 1998; King, 2003) and with authoritative parenting (demanding and responsive parenting), and has been negatively associated with authoritarian parenting (highly demanding and directive but not responsive) (Gunnoe, et al, 1999).
Transmission of Religiosity. The transmission of religiosity itself within families has been the focus of research on socialization, and is of interest as a special case of family communication. Many factors influence the transmission of religious beliefs and practices to children and adolescents, with parents and family generally being viewed as the primary agent of religious socialization (King, Furrow, & Roth, 2002). Some researchers have found that parents transmit their religious beliefs, affiliation, and activities to their children, and this is more likely to happen when parent-child relationships are warm and parental communication about religion is clear (Bao et al, 1999; Benson et al, 1989). Myers (1996) found that three factors aid in the familial transfer of religiosity: parental religiosity, quality of the family relationship, and traditional family structure. Of these factors, parental religiosity was the biggest determinant of offspring's religiosity.
Other researchers have added insights into the process of religious transmission. For example, Regenerus, Smith, & Smith (2004) find that parental religiosity is more strongly related to adolescents' religious participation (a behavior over which parents can maintain a certain level of control) than it is to their sense of the importance of religion. Erickson (1992) found that parents' religious influence and activity had an indirect influence on adolescents' religious commitments by directing them to other social influencers (peers, school, faith community) that have increasing salience during adolescence. Similarly, Martin, White, and Perlman's (2003) analyses found that parents have an effect on adolescent religiosity through peer influence.
Youth Outcomes. The research literature has linked both parental and youth religiosity with youth outcomes. Researcher Christian Smith (2003) identifies nine key factors that provide the mechanisms through which religion is linked to positive outcomes for adolescents. They include moral directives, spiritual experiences, role models, community and leadership skills, coping skills, cultural knowledge and experiences, social ties, network closure, and extra-community links. These factors can be grouped into three broad areas of influence: moral order, learned competencies, and social and organizational ties. In other research literature, parental involvement in religious activities was linked to youth outcomes across several domains, including avoidance of early sexual activity and delinquent behaviors, reduced incidence of depression, increased cognitive and social competence and social responsibility (Bridges and Moore, 2002; Brody, et al., 1996; Gunnoe, et al., 1999; Miller, et al., 1997; Sherkat and Ellison, 1999; Moore et al, 2004; Amoateng and Bahr, 1986; Hundleby and Mercer, 1987).
Religiosity among youth themselves has also been linked to youth behaviors, mental health, and social connections. For example, several studies have linked religiosity and the development of morality and altruism (Kedem and Cohen, 1987; Donahue and Benson, 1995), although the mechanism, whether the inclusion of community service activities in religious youth group participation, or religious service attendance, or the social networks to which youth are exposed through religious participation, is debated (King and Furrow 2001). Related research from Search Institute has found that religious contexts can provide resources to help youth develop and mediate the influence of religion (Wagener, Furrow, King, Leffert, & Benson, 2003). They find, for example, that the frequency of religious attendance seems to enhance positive engagement with adults outside of one's own family (Scales, Benson, & Mannes, 2003). Markstrom (1999) found that three different measures of religious involvement - frequency of service attendance, participation in a Bible study group, and participation in a church youth group - were all positively associated with school-related self esteem in a sample of 11th grade students. Church attendance also was related to the ego strength of the will (i.e., the awareness of free will and the ability to exert self-control). Similarly, Wright, Frost, and Wisecarver (1993) found that adolescents who attended church more frequently, and those who viewed religion as providing meaning to their lives, had lower depression scores than did less religious adolescents. Additional work focused on links between youth religiosity and lower levels of negative behaviors, such as drug use, smoking, drinking, gambling, and risky sexual activity (Evans, et al., 1996; Donahue & Benson, 1995; Brownfield & Sorenson, 1991; Jang & Johnson, 2001).
Fostering Pro-social Behavior. Other research has focused on how religious congregations can foster connections between families and the broader society, as in the examples cited for youth above, as well as provide opportunities for families to participate in civic life and volunteerism that may not otherwise be readily available (Becker & Dinhgra, 2001). For example, Wuthnow (2002) found that membership in a religious congregation and holding a congregational leadership position were associated with having friendships which bridge social status, while frequency of religious attendance was largely unrelated. Other research by the Independent Sector on volunteering and giving in the United States has found that religious households with volunteers give substantially more to charity per year ($2,704) than secular households with volunteers ($1,000) and religious households without volunteers ($1,410) (Toppe, et al., 2002). Additional analyses from the National Educational Longitudinal Survey of 1988 (NELS) suggest that adolescents who attend religious services are more likely to volunteer than those who never attend religious services (Zaff, et al., 2001).
Parental, family, and youth religiosity, then, has been linked by substantial research to many of the domains of the social context of families, including family functioning, civic engagement, youth outcomes, and social connections.
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Measures of religiosity include formal religious service attendance, personal practices, beliefs and views on the importance of religion, religious identity, and family communication or community connections. Existing national surveys include some items on religiosity and spirituality, however there is significant overlap in the questions asked in these surveys and the aspects of religiosity that they tend to capture.
Service attendance. Questions about the frequency of attendance at religious services are asked in the National Survey of America's Families (NSAF), the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth -1997 (NLSY97), the National Educational Longitudinal Survey of 1988 (NELS), the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health), Monitoring the Future, the National Survey of Children (NSC), the National Survey of Families and Households (NSFH), and the Independent Sector Survey of Giving and Volunteering, among others.
A good example of a measure of parental attendance can be found in the NSAF, which asks parents of children ages 0 to 17, " In the past 12 months, how often have you attended a religious service?" Data from the NSAF show that among children under 18, 40 percent have a parent who attends religious services once a week or more, 19 percent have a parent who attends a few times a month, and 41 percent have a parent who never attends or only attends a few times a year (Moore, et al., 2002). An indicator based upon this NSAF measure was created for the chartbook for this project. Similar results have been found in analyses of the NLSY97 (Moore, et al., 2002). On the NLSY97, parents were asked, "In the past 12 months, how often have you attended worship service (like church or synagogue service or mass)?"
A measure of frequency of family religious attendance as well as other family religious activities can be found in the NLSY. Adolescents aged 12 to 14 are asked, "In a typical week, how many days from 0 to 7 do you do something religious as a family such as go to church, pray or read the scriptures together?" Longitudinal analyses from the first three waves of the NLSY97 have found that this measure of family religiosity predicts positive adolescents outcomes. This measure was also developed into an indicator for the chartbook for this project.
Measures of youth religious service attendance (without respect to whether or not attendance is with their families) can be found in several data sets. The NELS asked 10th and 12th graders in 1990 and 1992, respectively, "In the past year, about how often have you attended religious services?" Analyses of NELS showed that almost half (46%) of high school students attended religious services at least weekly, over a third (36%) attended occasionally, and the rest (18%) did not attend at all (Moore, et al, 2002).
Importance of religion. Less widespread are measures of the importance of religion in one's life. Questions on importance are found in several surveys, including Monitoring the Future (MTF), Add Health, and the NSC. For instance, MTF asks high school seniors, "How important is religion in your life?" In 2002, thirty-three percent of twelfth graders said that religion was very important in their lives, 30% said that religion was pretty important, 23% said that religion had little importance in their lives, and 14% said that religion was not important to them. The NELS asks questions about the importance of friends participating in religious services, and the importance of one's school or college providing a religious environment.
Data on adults (not necessarily parents) from a 2001 Gallup Poll found that 55% said religion was "very important" in their lives, while another 30% reported it as "fairly important" (Gallup Organization, 2002). The NSLY also contains a measure for parental beliefs about the importance of religion for having desired values.
Family religious and spiritual practices. In several national studies of Protestant Christians, Search Institute measured a number of basic dimensions of family religious practices or socialization (Benson & Eklin, 1990; Benson, Roehlkepartain, & Andress, 1995). These measures included talking to mother or father about faith, participating in family devotions, prayer, or reading of sacred texts, and engaging in family projects together to serve others. The NLSY contains measures about prayer among parents. Parents report on the frequency of prayer and how often they ask God for help with decisions.
Religious identity. NELS: 88 has a measure on the degree to which twelfth graders in 1992 identified themselves as religious (i.e., "Do you think of yourself as a religious person?"). Thirteen percent considered themselves to be very religious, 61% said that they are somewhat religious, and 26% said that they were not at all religious (Moore, et al., 2002). A measure of religious affiliation can be found in NELS:88 as well as in Monitoring the Future. The Monitoring the Future Survey finds that, in 2000, most (83.7%) high school seniors reported affiliation with a religious denomination or tradition (Bachman, et al, 2000).
While we have identified numerous measures in several surveys on religiosity, none of those mentioned above contain detailed information on religious activities, beliefs, and attitudes across the spectrum of religious traditions. However, a recently fielded survey by researchers at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, titled the National Study of Youth and Religion (NSYR), represents a comprehensive effort to assess all of these facets of religiosity for youth and their parents in meticulous depth.(1)
Data from the NSYR are expected to be available for analysis in the fall of 2004, and it will be a rich source of new data on the religiosity of youth and their parents. Since it also contains outcome measures and attitudinal measures, including those about marriage, sex, substance use, schooling, etc., it will be possible to relate religiosity to outcomes through cross-sectional and longitudinal analyses.
The National Study of Youth and Religion is designed to "research the shape and influence of religion and spirituality in the lives of American adolescents; to identify effective practices in the religious, moral, and social formation of the lives of youth; to describe the extent and perceived effectiveness of the programs and opportunities that religious communities are offering to their youth; and to foster an informed national discussion about the influence of religion in youth's lives, in order to encourage sustained reflection about and rethinking of our cultural and institutional practices with regard to youth and religion." Data from the NSYR were collected in 2002 via telephone survey from 3,200 American youth, ages 13 to 17, and parents, and a sub-sample of 250 youth were administered personal, in-depth interviews in 2003. The NSYR also will include a longitudinal component, following up with the original subjects in 2005, three years after the first wave of the survey. The NSYR contains many unique measures that are not found in other surveys, and some examples that are germane to this project on the social context of families are described below.
Specific religious practices across religions and spiritual practices. Among the broad areas of religiosity assessed by the survey are extensively detailed questions on religious affiliation, as well as detailed follow-ups tailored to the subject's religious affiliation pertaining to the practice of Christianity (e.g., having been baptized), Hinduism (e.g.,
observing cleansing rituals before prayer), Islam (e.g., fasting during Ramadan), Judaism (e.g., observing the Sabbath), and Buddhism (e.g., the presence of religious altars in the home). In addition, the survey asks about spiritual practices such as meditation, burning candles, listening to religious radio, CDs or tapes, and whether the youth prays alone or with parents other than at mealtimes or religious services.
Multiple affiliations. The NSYR contains items on religious service attendance for primary, secondary, and tertiary affiliations, and asks the extent that respondents may be involved in attending religious services for more than one religion or denomination (e.g., "Do you attend religious services at any OTHER religious congregation?" The list of affiliations includes 67 possible responses.
Religious development over the life course. Several questions are asked about the extent to which individuals were raised in a particular religion and their religious development. Additional life course questions regarding attendance at religious services and reflections on being religious/non-religious (e.g., "Since you were 6 years old, were there any years when you were NOT regularly attending religious services, and if so, how many?" "When you are 25, do you think you will be attending religious services?") are also included.
The nature and influence of religious beliefs. The NSYR explores specific aspects of religious beliefs (e.g., life after death, existence of angels, miracles, beliefs about God, moving spiritual experiences, personal commitment to live one's life for God), as well as whether the individual is or is not "spiritual but not religious." In addition, the survey explores the extent to which these beliefs shape the youth's life and major life decisions.
Similarity of religious beliefs to one's parents and one's partner. The questionnaire explores whether youth feel that their beliefs are similar to their mother's and father's. Among those youth who have dated, questions are asked about whether their partner's religious beliefs were different from their own.
Religious communication in the home. An important question to the study of religiosity in the home is the frequency with which the family talks about God, the Scriptures, prayer, or other religious or spiritual topics.
Freedom to express religious beliefs in school. Several questions address behaviors and attitudes about the expression of religion in school.
Learning more about religion, and attitudes about one's house of worship. The survey asks about one's interest in learning more about religion, and the role of one's house of worship and religious groups in facilitating one's beliefs. In addition, the survey explores attitudes about the house of worship and the services attended there.
Involvement in youth groups or activities, clubs, or camps sponsored by a religious organization. Youth group membership is an important expression of religious affiliation among youth that is captured in the NSYR. In addition, the survey asks about donations to, and participation in volunteer and other activities with religious organizations, including participation in religious camps, retreats, choirs, etc.
Religious rites of passage. The survey asks about the youth's participation in rites of passage across various religions.
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This section addresses shortfalls in existing measures that limit our ability to portray the religiosity and spirituality of the American family.
Existing measures define religiosity narrowly. The most common measure of religiosity in surveys, the frequency of attending religious services, captures only a limited aspect of religiosity. The NSYR is the only survey that probes the many religious observances and spiritual practices that take place in the home and are less public, such as Jewish observation of the Sabbath and religious holidays such as Passover in the home, and Hindu and Buddhist use of shrines for prayer in their homes. Other examples include the frequency with which families pray together informally, read a sacred text, or say grace before dinner in a Christian home or the blessings after meals in a Jewish home. These activities are important for the transmission of religion, yet only the NSFR captures them. Other religious or spiritual activities, besides prayer, such as meditation, yoga, or spiritual singing that families can either engage in together or individually are not even captured with specificity in the NSYR.
In addition, Dollahite, Marks, & Goodman (2004) argue that religiosity (and family religiosity) is a multi-dimensional construct involving religious beliefs, religious practices, and religious community. Yet most studies overlook the interactions among these dimensions by focusing on one at a time. Understanding each dimension both individually and in interaction with the others is vital for accurately assessing the role of religion in family life.
Current measures do not clarify the relationship between religion and spirituality. Virtually all the available research on families focuses on traditional religious variables. A growing network of scholars is suggesting that spirituality is a related, but distinct, domain that merits careful measurement, including a range of spiritual experiences and practices that may or may not be embedded within religious traditions. These measures would explore domains of meaning, purpose, connectedness, and transcendence, which are generally believed to be elements of the spiritual life (see Benson, Roehlkepartain, & Rude, 2003; Hill & Pargament, 2003). Making this distinction may be vital for gaining widespread acceptance of these measures in national studies.
Measures need to include a wider diversity of practices and beliefs. Most of the existing surveys, particularly the Add Health and the NLSY, ask specific questions about beliefs and practices that are only relevant to Christians. As non-Christian religions continue to be more broadly represented in the general population of the United States, it is important that large-scale surveys take into account the practices and traditions of Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and other religious groups, as the NSYR has done. Additionally, current measures focus on public religious practices. Informal and personal religious practices that take place outside the confines of conventional religious activity, such as those surrounding one's own personal relationship with a deity or deities, are currently lacking in surveys.
Measures of family practices in the home are lacking. The extent to which both formal and informal religious practices occur in the context of family is critical to the measurement of family religiosity and spirituality. Examining the prevalence of praying together as a family in the home, or as individual members engaging in prayer, praying at meals, meditation, engaging in discussions about religion, the nature of specific communication about religion and spirituality, family attitudes toward religion, religious observance in the home (e.g., Sabbath), celebration of religious holidays and rites of passage, the presence of religious or sacred artifacts or places within the home, reading from sacred texts, religious story-telling, family pilgrimages to sacred places, participating in prayer circles, or volunteering through religious groups with one's family, for example, may underlie the development of religiosity and spirituality among family members.
Measures are needed that reflect the complexity of the formation of religious and spiritual identity. Many current measures of religiosity and spirituality in the family presume that religion is primarily transmitted through formal education and in one-way communication from parent to child. In addition, most measures focus only on the religious beliefs or practices of one person rather than religious compatibility and interaction within the family unit (Mahoney, Pargament, Tarakeshwar, & Swank, 2001). In reality, the process is much more complex, involving informal modeling, indirect influences, and a dynamic relationship between the parent(s), child, siblings, extended family, and other socializing influences.
Longitudinal measures are needed. One of the foremost weaknesses of the existing data is the absence of detailed, longitudinal data on the spirituality and religious practices and beliefs of youth and their parents. Some data sources, such as the NLSY97 and the National Survey of Families and Households (NSFH), do have some of these measures, but there are limitations in the questions asked and the populations surveyed. This detailed, long term trend data is a prerequisite for both achieving a better sense of the relationships between religiosity and various outcomes, as well as creating a more accurate description of the changes in religious attitudes and practices across the life course of families, from the first birth through the transition of children into adulthood.
It is also important to look at the effect of life course events (e.g., birth, marriage, health crises, death) on individual and family religiosity and spirituality.
Religion and spirituality as resources for coping. A growing body of research highlights the role of religion and spirituality in parental coping with sick or emotionally or behaviorally disturbed children (Pargament, 1997). Spirituality is also associated with coping with illness, crisis, or trauma for children and adolescents (e.g. Pendleton, Cavalli, Pargament, & Nasr, 2002). Additional work is needed to understand the relationships between serious family or personal problems and religiosity and spirituality. Little has been done to examine the role of family religiousness in coping with the daily stressors of parenting and family life. This area would likely include measures of spiritual support from God or a higher power, spiritual support within the family, support from religious or spiritual community, religious rituals as sources of hope and healing, and related issues for both parents and children (see Mahoney, Pargament, Tarakeshwar, & Swank, 2001).
Religion through media. Another area where measurement could be expanded is in the use of media to gather information about religion or to meet with others and discuss religion and/or spirituality. For instance, to what extent are people increasingly using the Internet or web-based chatrooms to explore their religion? To what extent do they watch religious programming on television or listen to it on their radio with their families, and how do those who do differ or not from those who only attend services? Are social connections lost from not participating with a congregation?
Measures for young children. While there are numerous measures for adolescents, there are no measures in national surveys on the religiosity or spirituality of younger children. Clearly, there are methodological obstacles to creating and fielding such measures, but they could be overcome with parent reports, and creative strategies such as drawing or choosing pictures, etc.
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New measures must be concise enough for practical use in an array of instruments, and brief versions must be available (Moore, Halle, Vandivere, & Mariner, 2002). In addition, we must take into account that the placement of religiosity items in national surveys may be controversial and therefore, considerable work may need to be done before attention to religiosity and spirituality measures can receive full public support (e.g., active parental consent, and dealing with concerns about the separation of church and state).
In trying to create indicators that take into account the constraints above, it is important to keep in mind the body of literature that examines how and to what degree religiosity causes individuals to be engaged in the world. This research conceives of religious experiences as honoring/listening to/affirming/accepting the sacred in one's own experience, but also as the extent to which individuals are compelled by their belief towards a compassionate engagement in the world (Benson, et al., 2003). A number of research studies have shown that, among American adolescents, measures which tap both of these two dimensions are stronger predictors of risk and thriving than are measures of the importance of religion or religious service attendance alone (Benson, Donahue, & Erickson, 1993; Benson, Williams, & Johnson, 1987). Here the important distinction is discerning, for a given individual, whether one's spiritual/religious engagement is more of an individual exercise or a collective, community-focused one, or both? Measures that are able to assess the degree to which one focuses spirituality inward or outward could help illuminate this dichotomy.
In addition, it is important to include within a given study measures of multiple dimensions of family religiosity, in order to avoid the comparison of different dimensions from different studies. As Dollahite, Marks, & Goodman (2004) note, the interaction between affiliation, beliefs, practices, and community engagement add depth of understanding to complexity of how various dimensions of religiousness and spirituality interact. For example, they report that some dimensions of congregational involvement may moderate family stressors (by, for example, providing social support), whereas others might exacerbate family stress (by, for example, increasing demands on the family).
Measures must take into account that the influence of parent and family religiosity on child and adolescent outcomes is, at least in part, indirect (Erickson, 1992; Regenerus, Smith, & Smith, 2004). Thus, it is important to include measures that will take into account the broader ecological or social context, including relationships with extended family, peers, and other adults, and engagement in the places they spend time, their involvement in personal and communal spiritual practices and activities, and their use of media. Across all of these potential influences, the issue of alignment or consistency and mutual reinforcement of spiritual values would yield important insights into the interactions among the multiple systems that shape young people's spiritual lives.
Finally, it is important not only that the proper religiosity and spirituality inputs are measured, but also that outcomes for individuals and families be queried in national surveys. Additionally, when possible, items should be placed in longitudinal, rather than cross-sectional surveys to allow more detailed life course analyses of the data.
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The range of survey items with which to measure religiosity has grown substantially in recent years. In addition, it would be possible to develop survey items in each of the areas under gaps and limitations above. While it would benefit the field to include as many items as possible with which tap the dimensions listed above, the space limitations of national surveys make that unlikely. Therefore, a selected set of measures is recommended below which highlight the aspects of religiosity that are particularly germane to the study of the social context of families.
Proven existing measures. Research cited above demonstrates that measures of religious attendance, religious activities as a family (such as the question in the NLSY) and questions on the importance of religion predict important positive outcomes for parents as well as youth, controlling for demographic variables, and therefore, these measures should be retained in national surveys.
Promising new key measures. There are several promising new measures of family religiosity and spirituality that may be adaptable to national surveys, with the caveat that these recommended measures are from the National Study of Youth and Religion (NSYR), which has not yet released its data. Therefore the psychometric reliability and the concurrent validity of these items will not be known until the data can be analyzed. Predictive validity cannot be addressed until the longitudinal data are collected and analyzed.
"Family Functioning" is one of the six domains of the Indicators of Child, Family and Community Connections Project. Family communication is a key part of how a family functions, and as cited in the research review above, it is important in the transmission of religiosity and values from parents to children. It also would add contextual information on one way in which religiosity is expressed in the family, which is lacking from most existing surveys. A question measuring family communication about religion is therefore recommended. Below is one example from the NSYR:
"How often, if ever, does your family talk about God, the scriptures, prayer, or other religious or spiritual things together?"
In the above example, we would recommend changing the word "scripture", which also appears in the NLSY97, to a term that is less laden with explicitly Jewish or Christian meaning (e.g., "religious texts"). In addition, it would be preferable to ask about each individual activity separately, (talking, studying texts, praying, or other) rather than just ascertaining the frequency of doing any of the above activities. This item would directly address specific groups of religious activities within the family context in which religious engagement is or is not occurring. Where space is available, asking follow-up questions to identify specific spiritual or religious practices that are not mentioned in the question and about personal involvement in those specific practices, whether they are from traditional religious practice or non-traditional practices, would enrich our current knowledge of individual and family practices. In addition, in order to understand religion in the family context, it is crucial to know the extent to which activities and behaviors involve some or all family members together.
Families typically comprise the environment in which children develop, and a component of that development is the development of religiosity. It seems critical to assess the extent to which children have the same religious affiliation, identity, and beliefs as their parents in order to address the importance of the family in religious development. This area of inquiry holds promise for expanding our understanding of family religiosity as well as individual religious development. Items from the NSYR could be adapted to capture these measures. For example,
"Would you say that your religious beliefs are very similar to your (mother, father); somewhat similar; somewhat different; or very different from your (mother, father)."
The direct measurement of spirituality, or a belief in a transcendent being or spirit, in contrast to religiosity, is often lacking in surveys, and this is an important distinction increasingly recognized by researchers that is often missed. When both types of items are asked, spirituality is typically more prevalent than participation in religious practices. To assess spirituality, it would be valuable to include an item such as one or two of the following questions from the National Study of Youth and Religion:
"Do you believe in God or not, or are you unsure?", or
"Have you ever, or not:
- had an experience of spiritual worship that was very moving and powerful
- experienced a definite answer to prayer or specific guidance from God
- witnessed or experienced what you believe was a miracle from God
- made a personal commitment to live your life for God?"
These items capture belief in a transcendent being as well as the salience of spirituality in one's life. Additionally, the existence of a personal relationship with God and attitudes about the influence of that relationship on events in one's life are important to capture, and again NSYR items could be adapted for this purpose. If questions similar to these were included along with measures of other independent variables which act as influences on outcomes, such as those typically found in surveys at the individual, family, school, and community levels, researchers might be able to isolate how spiritual and religious beliefs stack up against, or work in combination with other influences in predicting outcomes.
"Youth connections" is another of the key domains of interest in this exploration of the social context of families. To assess the role of religious institutions in youth development, as the literature cited above suggests, it would also be valuable to include items such as this one from the NYSR,
"Are there adults in your [house of worship], other than family members, who you enjoy talking with who give you lots of encouragement, or not?"
This question can provide additional insight into the direct mechanisms through which religious involvement provides social connections and community assets to youth. By extension, a similar item could be developed for parents to capture the extent to which parents receive help and support from other adults at their house of worship. In addition, we would recommend including items on participation in religious youth groups, camps, organizations, and activities, since these activities provide important socialization into religious groups and beliefs, particularly in adolescence, when religious service attendance tends to decline. Items on participation in these activities are available from several surveys.
Together, these recommended items, if added to existing surveys, would substantially expand our ability to measure family processes around religiosity, diversity in family religious practices and spiritual beliefs, youth and adult connections to religious communities, and how families reach beyond their communities to connect to God or other spiritual forces in their own family context.
Further measure development research needed. Although promising measures are on the horizon, it is clear that further measurement work is needed. Much of this work can be grounded in the analyses of the recently fielded National Study on Youth and Religion, which contains both a wide range of religiosity questions, as well as questions about youth outcomes, and a longitudinal design. Once the data and preliminary analyses from the NSYR become publicly available in fall of 2004, the research community will have a much broader matrix of religiosity inputs and well-being outcomes to analyze, providing a unique opportunity to examine many of these relationships for the first time. Psychometric analyses on the new items can be conducted as well. The NYSR also includes items about parents, but there is still a significant need to collect more detailed information on the religiosity of parents generally and their outcomes as well. In addition, there is a need to develop items on religiosity and spirituality that are suitable for young children, who are not included in the NYSR.
This paper has reviewed a rich research literature that suggests that measures of religiosity have important linkages to family well-being, and provides a basis for their inclusion in a portrait of the social context of families. Existing sources for indicators have been suggested which potentially could be included in any future work on family-related indicators that aims to portray the vast religious and spiritual diversity that exists in the contemporary United States. If placed in longitudinal research databases, these measures could provide opportunities to further understand the linkages between religiosity and individual and family outcomes.
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(1) The National Study of Youth and Religion instrument can be found at: http://www.youthandreligion.org/
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