Religious orientation, personality, mental health, and religious activity

Abstract

A sample of 471 subjects, 303 women and 168 men, with 392 nonpatents and 79 nonpsychotic psychiatric inpatients, was studied. Only subjects who had a positive attitude to Christianity and who prayed to God were included in the sample. They answered a questionnaire with 358 items about sociodemographic information, their gender, age and education, religious activity, religious orientation (Intrinsic, Extrinsic, and Quest Scales), belief (Doctrinal Orthodoxy and Liberal Belief Scales), and morality (Moral Conservatism Index and Humanistic Morality Scale), the psychiatric Symptom Check-list-90 (SCL-90), and Basic Character Inventory (BCI) Oral, Obsessive, and Hysterical Scales. Cronbach's alphas were high or satisfactory for most of the scales. In hierarchic multiple regression analysis with the SCL-90 Global Symptom Index (SCL-90 GSI) as dependent variable, education, BCI Oral, Obsessive, and Hysterical Scales, Extrinsic and Quest Scales, and Moral Conservatism Index together explained 38.8% of the variance of the SCL-90 Global Symptom Index. Education and BCI Hysterical scores were negatively related to and the other independent variables were positively related to SCL-90 Global Symptom Index score. In hierarchic multiple regression analysis with religious activity as the dependent variable, age, Intrinsic orientation, and Liberal Belief together explained 40.2% of the variance. Liberal Belief was negatively related to, and age and Intrinsic orientation were positively related to the respondents' religious activity.