Poster #122 - Autonomous Motivations for Abstinence Mediates Relations between Religiousness and Adolescent Sex and Alcohol Use

• In Event: 3-106 - Poster Session 11
  In Poster Session: PS 11 Section - Moral Development

Integrative Statement

Religiousness protects youth from risk behaviors such as sex and alcohol (Cheung & Yeung, 2011). More research is needed (1) identifying mediating processes and (2) comparing multiple dimension of religiousness. First, one potentially important yet unexplored mediator is adolescents’ motivations to abstain from risk behaviors. Self-determination theory posits that when social contexts (e.g., religion) nurture the psychological need for autonomy, people are more autonomously motivated (Deci & Ryan, 2002). To be autonomously motivated means to act, or refrain from acting, because you want to (e.g., based on your values and identity). Youth more autonomously motivated to abstain from risk behaviors less frequently engage in them (Hardy, Dollahite, Johnson, & Christensen, 2015). Second, two key dimensions of religiousness are religious involvement (i.e., worship service attendance) and religious salience (i.e., the importance of religion to one’s life). The purpose of the present study was to compare religious involvement and religious salience as predictors of adolescent sex and alcohol use, and test autonomous abstinence motivations as a mediator.
The sample included 178 adolescents recruited from across the U.S. using a survey panel (M age = 15.15, SD =1.48). Participants completed an online survey. Religious involvement was assessed using 14 items (capturing both public and private religious behaviors), and religious salience using 10 items (capturing the importance of religious to various aspects of life, such as making major life decisions), adapted from existing measures. Controlled and autonomous motivations to abstain from sex and alcohol were assessed using new scales (6 items for each motivation for each target behavior) developed for this research, developed based on existing self-determination theory measures. Sex and alcohol use were measured using single items asking how often in the past year youth had done those behaviors, on an 8-point scale from “Not in the past year” to “Once or more a day.”
We tested the hypothesized mediation model using path analysis in Mplus (see Figure 1). We estimated a full mediation model that included paths from religious involvement and salience to autonomous abstinence motivations, and from autonomous abstinence motivations to sex and alcohol use. Given that this full mediation model did not fit significantly worse than a partial mediation model which included directs paths from religiousness to behavior, and that it was the more parsimonious model, it was retained. The final model had excellent model fit, 2(4)=3.49, ns, RMSEA=.00, CFI=1. Religious salience, but not religious involvement, positively predicted autonomous motivations to abstain from sex and alcohol. In turn, motivation to abstain from sex and alcohol negatively predicting the same behavior but not the other behavior. Significant indirect effects were found from religious salience to sex through motivations to abstain from sex (β = -.17, p = .004), and to alcohol through motivations to abstain from alcohol (β = -.18, p = .001).
In conclusions, abstinence motivations may be an important mediating process whereby religiousness protects youth against risk behaviors. Further, the processes are likely behavior specific, and driven more by religious salience than involvement.

Authors

• Jenae Nelson, Brigham Young University
  Presenting Author

• Jeffrey Hurst, Brigham Young University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Sam Hardy, Brigham Young University
  Non-Presenting Author