Religious Versus Nonreligious Socialization: Does Religious Background Have Implications for Adjustment?

Abstract

Two studies were carried out to assess possible links between religious and nonreligious socialization and adjustment. In Study 1, three questionnaires were administered to 216 students, before and during their first year at a small Canadian university. Comparisons were made among those raised in (a) "no religion," (b) mainline Protestant, (c) conservative Protestant, and (d) Catholic families. Our 11 measures of mental health and adjustment exhibited strong psychometric properties and were intercorrelated as expected, but they did not distinguish among our 4 groups. Nor were these adjustment scores correlated with self-reports of religious emphasis in the childhood home. Study 2 involved 2 questionnaires administered to 615 Canadian senior high school students. Again, measures had strong psychometric properties and were intercorrelated as expected. But again, there was no indication that students from "no religion" backgrounds differed from students from religious backgrounds on our primary measures of adjustment: depression, self-esteem, dispositional optimism, and social support. Nor were these measures related to a Religious Emphasis scale. In this study we were also able to control for the possibly contaminating effects of socioeconomic status and current religiosity as covariates, and we included gender as an independent variable, although results indicated that its effects were minor. In combination, these 2 studies offer very little support for claims that religious socialization has positive implications for adjustment among youth, although there was limited evidence that current religiosity was weakly related to some measures of adjustment in Study 2.