One of the ways that the Center for Spiritual Development in Childhood and Adolescence is exploring religious and spiritual influences on the lives of individuals is through secondary analyses of large international datasets that contain data on religious beliefs, practices, and values. These kinds of analyses serve at least two purposes:
1. By analyzing these religious data across different groups, we can identify similarities and differences in how diverse groups think about and organize religious constructs;
2. Exploring other datasets will help us prepare for our own international survey and implementation in a few years.
One of the datasets we’ve been exploring is the World Values Survey (WVS). The WVS is a survey that asks individuals from over 60 countries about their individual beliefs, attitudes, and values across a host of political, social, economic, and religious questions. First administered in 1980, the WVS has since been given roughly every 5 years (the last time in 2004), and yields interesting trends in how people from various countries think about their lives in society.
For our purposes, we selected out the youngest cohort—those ages 18–24—for a total sample of about 15,000. Figure 1 shows the percentages of this sample in terms of their self-identified religious denomination. Additionally, we selected out variables that referenced religion and faith, such as religious beliefs (e.g., “I believe in God”), importance of religion (e.g., “I take comfort and strength from religion”), religion and politics (e.g., “It would be better if more people with strong religious beliefs were in government”), and religious practices (e.g., “I take moments out of my day for prayer or meditation”).
Figure 1
For example, we’ve found that about 77% of 18–24 year olds consider themselves “a religious person,” with self-described Buddhists reporting the lowest percentage (48%) and self-described Muslims reporting the highest (88%). A similar percentage—78%—also reported that they take great comfort and strength, again anchored by Buddhists (68%) and Muslims (96%).
However, we’re not only looking at differences across faith traditions in this sample. We’re also looking for similarities and differences within different faith traditions across the world. Thus, we’ve been running some additional analyses comparing, for example, self-described Muslims living in Europe with self-described Muslims living in Asia and Africa.
Figure 2
Figure 3
Figures 2 and 3 show these kinds of within-group analyses, with participants asked to rate on a four-point scale the importance of religion to them (Figure 2) and their confidence in their church or mosque (Figure 3). In Figure 2, there seems to be very little within-group difference within the Muslim sample, while the differences in the Catholic group are more pronounced. For example, the difference between the European Catholic values and the African Catholic data is about the same as the difference between saying that religion is only “kind of important” and saying religion is “very important” you. In Figure 3, we see more of a within-group difference for the Muslim sample, such that European Muslims report far less confidence in their mosques than do Asian or African Muslims, while the Catholic story looks very similar to Figure 2.
These kinds of findings highlight that there are interesting similarities and differences not only across different religions, but within those religions themselves. As we continue to explore the developmental significance of children and adolescents’ spirituality, it will be important to remember that there are many factors that go into one’s sense of their spirituality—ecological, relational, and personal. It is these factors that we will continue to examine using datasets like the World Values Survey.
