Keeping the Faith: Protective Factor Contributions to African American Adolescents’ Spirituality After Victimization

• In Event: 2-196 - "Power, Love, and a Sound Mind?": Religion and Mental Health for Diverse Youth

Integrative Statement

Adolescence is a key time for spiritual growth and development (Good & Willoughby, 2008). Further, extensive research has documented the protective effects conferred by religiosity and spirituality during this time of development (Jenkins et al., 2014). Yet a recent study of African American adolescents found that the protection conferred by intrinsic and extrinsic religiosity against depressive symptoms declined as these youth faced large numbers of stressful life events (Lee & Neblett, 2017). The present study extends this work and that of another recent study that found distinct patterns of change in adolescents’ intrinsic religiosity during adolescence (reference removed for blind review) by examining factors that contribute to victimized adolescents’ decision to either “keep the faith” or wane in their levels of religiosity.
The current study draws on a sample of 355 youth (> 90% African American; 54% female; M age = 12.1, SD = 1.6 years) who participated in a 4-time point study of stress and adjustment. Latent Class Growth Analyses were used to identify profiles of change in intrinsic religiosity over early and middle adolescence. Analyses revealed three distinct profiles in each developmental period: high and steady; moderate with declines over the study period; and low and steady (see Figure 1). A subsample of 85 youth who had experienced high levels of peer victimization at Time 2 relative to same-grade peers in the sample and who evidenced either a high and steady or decliner profile were subjected to analyses to determine theoretically-informed protective factors that discriminated these trajectories. Adolescents and mothers provided data on these protective factors, which were collected at Time 2 and used to predict profile membership. We hypothesized that adolescents in the “high and steady” profile would report higher levels of protective factors than adolescents in the “decliner” profile. Table 1 presents descriptive information on study variables and t-tests comparing youth who were classified into the “high and steady” profile versus the “decliner” profile on the protective factors.
As seen in Table 1, analyses revealed that emotion regulation, goal directedness, parental acceptance, and problem-focused and religious coping were higher among youth who remained high and steady in their intrinsic religiosity versus youth who declined in their intrinsic religiosity. Parental religious commitment did not differ across groups. Logistic regression analysis revealed that grade cohort (OR = .04, CI = .01 - .19, p < .001), goal-directedness (OR = 1.47, CI = 1.13 – 1.92, p = .004), and religious coping (OR = 1.26, CI = 1.06 – 1.50, p = .009) uniquely predicted profile membership from the combination of demographic and protective factors. Gender (p = .50), emotion regulation (p = .07), problem-focused coping (p = .85), felt acceptance from mother (p = .85), and mother’s religious commitment (p = .22) were unassociated with profile membership in the multivariate model. Given the protective effects of intrinsic religiosity (Jenkins et al., 2014), these data suggest that religious coping and goal directedness are important targets for intervention following victimization experiences, and could protect youth from the negative effects of such experiences.

Authors

• Wendy Kliewer, Virginia Commonwealth University
  Presenting Author

• Joana Salifu Yendork, University of Ghana
  Non-Presenting Author

• Anna W Wright, Virginia Commonwealth University
  Non-Presenting Author

• David W Sosnowski, Virginia Commonwealth University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Melissa Washington-Nortey, Virginia Commonwealth University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Kristina McGuire, Virginia Commonwealth University
  Non-Presenting Author