Religiosity in relation to depression and well-being among adolescents – a comparison of findings among the Anglo-Saxon population and findings among Austrian high school students

Abstract

The aim of this study was to examine if the relationships between religiosity and less depression/greater well-being predominantly found in the Anglo-Saxon language regions can be replicated in the German-speaking region. Religiosity was assessed with the Index of Core Spiritual Experiences (INSPIRIT) and the Religious Well-Being (RWB) – both measures of intrinsic religiosity, Religious socialisation and questions concerning religious practice. Depression/well being were assessed with the Depression–Happiness Scale (DHS) and Existential Well-Being (EWB). With a sample of 201 high school students, religious practice was not found to be significantly correlated with any measure of depression/well-being as expected. The INSPIRIT and the RWB were not significantly associated with the DHS, but they were – to a very small extent – with the EWB. These results differ from the Anglo-Saxon findings, except for the significant positive correlation between intrinsic religiousness and EWB.

Keywords:

• religiosity
• religion
• adolescents
• depression
• well-being

Notes

1. On the one hand, these participants clearly gave wrong answers to questions concerning sociodemographic data, on the other hand they showed extreme response tendencies on several scales, that is, they scored two standard deviations above or below the mean and stood out by extreme responses in an outlier analysis, respectively.

2. The possible score range was not unitary for all the items of the INSPIRIT. It ranged from 2 to 4. In order to get adequate statistical values, the total sum was divided by the number of answered items (in order to account for the frequently occurring missing values).

3. Due to the fact that the vast majority of the scales were not normally distributed, nonparametric tests were applied when examining gender differences, that is, the Mann–Whitney U-test.

4. Spearman correlations were used because most of the scales were not normally distributed.