Contextual influence on the development of childrens religious belief, emotion, and practice
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abstract
As an important dimension of human development, religious development has gained increasing interest among developmental researchers. Although religion can serve as valuable developmental assets for children and adolescents, we know little about the developmental processes of key religious dimensions, such as religious belief, emotion, and practice. There is also a lack of understanding about the impact of developmental contexts on childrens religious development. In the current study, by using longitudinal data from the Character and Merit Project, we explored a multi-part question about religious development in childhood: 1. what religious dimensions develop in 2. what ways among 3. what groups of youth in 4. what developmental contexts? Five waves of longitudinal data were collected across 2.5 years from 1,723 boys between 6 and 11 years of age across the greater Philadelphia metropolitan area, including 334 Scouts whose Scouting activities occurred in non-religious settings (Mage = 8.82, SD = 1.28), 1,064 Scouts whose Scouting activities occurred in religious settings (Mage = 8.83, SD = 1.32), 104 non-Scout boys attending religious schools (Mage = 9.30, SD = 1.42), and 221 non-Scout boys attending non-religious schools (Mage = 9.83, SD = 1.68). Through surveys, youth rated themselves on a 1-5 Likert scale about their religious belief (i.e., I believe in God.), emotion (i.e., I like to read or listen to stories from my religion.), and practice (i.e., I pray.). Latent growth-curve analyses were used to examine the developmental trajectories of youth self-rated religious dimensions. Participant age at each wave was included as a time-variant covariate to control for potential age effects on youth self-ratings of the religious dimensions. All models fit the data well with good model fit indices: CFI = .93-.95, TLI = .93-.95, RMSEA = .019-.045. A negative age effect was found on youth self-rated emotion with their religion (B =-.12, SE = .02, p < .001). Older youth reported lower enjoyment with stories from their religion than younger youth. Across the five waves, no significant change was found on the three religious dimensions among youth whose developmental context is non-religious (i.e., Scouts whose Scouting activities occurred in non-religious settings, non-Scout boys attending non-religious schools). For Scouts whose Scouting activities occurred in religious settings, there was a significant decline in their religious belief but the effect size was trivial (Slope = -.028, SE = .01, p < .05, d = -.13). For non-Scout boys attending religious schools, significant declines were found for both their religious emotion (Slope = -.13, SE = .05, p < .01, d = -.43) and religious practice (Slope = -.12, SE = .05, p < .01, d = -.42). The effect sizes for both declines were small to medium. These findings suggest that childrens in-school and out-school settings jointly create unique developmental contexts for individual youth. Different religious dimensions may have different developmental pathways according to specific person-context synergy. More person-centered context-specific longitudinal studies are needed to elucidate the developmental processes of youth religiosity.
