Understanding the Relationship Between Religiosity and Hope in Adolescence

• In Event: Poster Session 14
  In Poster Session: PS 14 Topic - Social, Emotional, Personality

Abstract

It is well known that youth religiosity and hope are correlated regarding positive adjustment outcomes such as life satisfaction, and lower levels of depression and anxiety (DiPierro et al., 2017, Marques et al., 2013; Rose et al., 2018). Presently, it remains uncertain whether hope gives rise to religiosity or vice versa during adolescence. Hope and religiosity have both been explored independently in their connection towards positive adjustment outcomes. Though a deeper purpose of religiosity is to foster a sense of hope, the nuance of whether a sense of hope and religiosity are malleable and directly affected by one another has yet to be fully examined. Therefore, the purpose of the study is to investigate whether and to what degree hope influences the presence of religiosity and vice versa. Understanding the interplay between these two constructs is essential for developing applications and interventions by recognizing what construct can be focused on versus another, in order to promote positive youth development.
The sample for this study consists of (N = 450) middle adolescents (M = 13.33 years old, SD = 1.05, range = 11-16; 51% female; 67% European American) from a city in the northwest United States. Responses were collected from waves III (2009) and IV (2010) of the Flourishing Families Project (FFP). Subjects completed multiple assessments of their demographic factors, in concert with self-report questionnaires of hope and religiosity.
Hypotheses were tested in two multiple regressions. At the first step of each, controlling for demographic factors, both hope and religiosity were associated with each other over one year. At the second step, each construct demonstrated substantial stability, which mitigated the crossover effect of the other construct. Ultimately, these analyses showed that hope and religiosity (though moderately correlated within and across waves) were both individually stable across time yet did not have a significant influence upon the other when that stability was modeled. This finding is consistent with previous research (e.g., Marques et al., 2013), suggesting that intervention in one area would have collateral benefits in the other at this point of development. Thus, in the poster, we will explore age as a moderator of the main effects. We will also discuss the implications for intervention given these findings that the development of hope is not predicated on the presence of religiosity, as well as that religiosity is not contingent upon a personal sense of hope. However, the age range of the present sample is wider than in previous studies of stability (e.g., Good et al., 2011), which introduces questions about whether there are points of adolescence in which these constructs may have comparatively more modest stability and thus be somewhat sensitive to intervention efforts.

Authors

• Miles Payne, West Virginia University
  Presenting Author

• Kristin L Moilanen, West Virginia University
  Non-Presenting Author