Change and Stability of Religious Orientations during College: Part I. Freshman-Senior Comparisons

Abstract

From results of research done during the past forty years, it may be inferred that, on the average, students decrease in general "religiosity" and in religious "orthodoxy" or "fundamentalism" during their years at college. With respect to changes in the degree of uniformity of students' religious outlooks, at some schools there is increasing homogeneity, and at others there is increasing heterogeneity. Freshman-senior differences presented in most of the extant studies must be interpreted with great caution, due to the existence of three major difficulties: possible multi-dimensionality of measuring instruments assumed to be unidimensional; the masking of degree and direction of individual changes by average change; and insufficient study of change in non-college comparison (or control) groups. Researchers have studied change and stability of college students during their undergraduate years along a wide variety of dimensions-including intellectual skills and dispositions; capacity for independent and creative thinking; skills necessary for moving into adult statuses; values and life goals; attitudes toward political, economic, social, and religious issues; authoritarianism and prejudice; and interpersonal and intrapersonal adjustments (including a number of personality dimensions). This article is a review and integration of the research literature in one of these areas: religious change and stability of undergraduate college students. This article is based on a recent monograph (Feldman and Newcomb, 1969) the purpose of which was to integrate the published and unpublished research of the past four decades on the impacts of America's colleges on their students.' The search for published and unpublished literature was not intended to be a complete omnium gatherum nor a total flight into exhaustiveness, although there was an attempt to be as comprehensive as possible within the limitations of available resources. Information about the change and stability of students along the religious dimension is dispersed throughout this monograph. What I wish to do in this and the forthcoming second part is to gather together this scattered information and, more importantly, to present additional information about certain stud-