Citation
Smith, Christian; Faris, Robert; Denton, Melinda Lundquist; & Regnerus, Mark (2003). Mapping American adolescent subjective religiosity and attitudes of alienation toward religion: A research report. Sociology of Religion. vol. 64 (1) pp. 111-133Abstract
Sociologists know surprisingly little about the religious attitudes and practices of adolescents in the United States. This article begins to redress that lack of knowledge by examining descriptive findings on adolescent religiosity and attitudes toward religion from two recent, reputable national surveys of American youth. We present descriptive statistics on three fundamental aspects of subjective youth religiosity (importance of religion, frequency of prayer, born again status) and four measures of youth attitudes of alienation toward religion (agreement with parents, approval of churches, desired influence of churches, financial donations to churches). We also examine the influences of gender, race, age, and region on most of these religious outcomes. This descriptive inquiry should help to increase understanding of and to help lay down a baseline of essential descriptive information about American adolescent religiosity. Further research is needed to investigate the social influence of different kinds of religiosity on various outcomes in the lives of American youth.URL
http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/3712271Keyword(s)
ReligionReference Type
Journal ArticleJournal Title
Sociology of ReligionAuthor(s)
Smith, ChristianFaris, Robert
Denton, Melinda Lundquist
Regnerus, Mark