Family Facts: Social Science Research on Family, Society & Religion
Top Ten Findings
Reducing Teens' Risk: What Role Can Religion Play?
October 2008
1. Teens who say that religion is important in their lives and/or attend church services frequently are less likely than other peers to engage in risky behaviors. Compared with other peers, youths who said religion was important in their lives and/or attended religious services frequently were less likely to smoke, use alcohol, be truant, be sexually active, use marijuana, or report feelings of depression, even when controlling for family background variables and self-esteem.
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2. Teens who pray often, attend church services and youth activities frequently, and place a high importance on religion are less likely to be sexually active. Adolescents who placed a higher importance on religion, prayed often, and attended church services and church youth activities more frequently were less likely to report ever having had sex.
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3. Teens who say they are religious are less likely to engage in vandalism than their peers. Compared with youths who reported high levels of religiosity, those who reported low levels of religiosity were twice as likely to engage in vandalism.
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4. Adolescent girls who attend religious services and church youth activities more often are less likely than others to have ever been pregnant. Compared with other peers, adolescent girls who attended religious services and church youth activities more frequently were less likely to have ever been pregnant.
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5. Among a sample of African American teens, the importance religion has in their lives is associated with a lower liklihood of engaging in sexual activity. Among African American youths surveyed, those who who placed a greater importance on religion were less likely to report having had sex in the previous year or having had sex without birth control.
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6. Low-risk teens who say religion is important in their lives are less likely to engage in delinquency than peers who place less emphasis on religion. There is a substantive and sizable relationship between the rating a student gives to the “importance of religion” and his vulnerability to delinquency. With each unit increase in the importance assigned to religious faith, the odds of a youth being vulnerable to delinquency decline by approximately 33%. Even when controlling for other factors such as academic performance the relationship between the importance youths assign to religion and the lesser likelihood of delinquency remains strong.
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7. Teens who frequently engage in private religious practices are less likely to exhibit anti-social behavior. Youths who more frequently prayed and read, watched, or heard religious content were less likely to exhibit anti-social behavior. Private religious practices also moderated the impact of factors associated with an increase in violent behavior, such as witnessing violence or being the victim of violence.
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8. Adolescents who attend church services more frequently and say that religion is more important in their lives are less likely to engage in substance abuse than their peers. Adolescents who were more religious (i.e. attended church more frequently and assigned a higher importance to religion in their lives) were less likely to smoke cigarettes, engage in binge drinking, and smoke marijuana.
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9. Adolescents and young adults who receive more spiritual support from family and friends are less likely to become sexually active. The stronger the spiritual interconnectedness between youths and their family and friends was, particularly with friends, the less likely they were to have engaged in voluntary sexual activity.
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10. Students attending schools with a more religious environment are less likely to use marijuana than peers in less religious school settings. The higher the level of religiosity in a school the lower the likelihood that students will use marijuana, even when controlling for individual student's religiosity (measured by church attendance).
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Events:Religious Practice and Civic Life: What the Research Says October 4, 2007 |