Abstract
This study addresses the importance of substance abuse in regards to religiosity. Prior research (Hodge, Cardenas, & Montoya, 2001) indicates that both high spirituality and religious participation are predictors of low substance abuse. Other research in the past has shown that adolescents that scored high on the Alcohol Involvement scale tended to come from families that were not characterized as having a strong orientation to religion (McGue, Sharma, & Benson, 1996). For this study 5097 participants were analyzed utilizing data from the Relate Assessment, which analyzes factors that have impact on substance abuse. The results found that higher spiritual confirmation significantly predicted lower substance abuse while controlling for partner substance abuse, levels of commitment, religious orientation score, and happiness p<0.01, (Adj R2 =.26). To test if there is a difference between religiosity and gender, this study ran a 2 (gender) x 10 (religion) factorial ANOVA. Results indicated a significant difference among those that affiliate themselves with religion, and their gender p<.001. A Tukey HSD found that high frequency of practice and high intensity belief religious groups differed significantly from the others F(1,9) = 4.31, p<.001, pb2=0.01. We conclude that high religiosity can predict low substance abuse, as well as a difference in levels of religiosity among a variety of religious groups.
Author Information
Leslie Silva, Brigham Young University Hawaii, United States
Ronald Mellado Miller, Brigham Young University Hawaii, United States
Paper Information
Conference: ACP2017
Stream: Qualitative/Quantitative Research in any other area of Psychology
This paper is part of the ACP2017 Conference Proceedings (View)
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