Islamic religiosity and subjective well-being in the United Arab Emirates: the roles of gender, social contacts, and religious social support

ABSTRACT

This research uses a sample of Muslim adults (n = 569) living in the United Arab Emirates to investigate the association between Islamic religiosity and subjective well-being (SWB), with a particular focus on how gender, social contacts (both religious and secular), and religious social support affect this relationship. The findings of this research demonstrate that higher Islamic religiosity predicts higher levels of SWB for both men and women equally. Individually, the frequency of social contact (with religious contacts, family, and friends) was associated with higher SWB for both men and women, but only religious and family (but not friends) contact partially mediated the religiosity-SWB association. A mediation analysis showed that the frequency of contact with religious community members was associated with better SWB, in part, because of the religious social support these contacts provide.

KEYWORDS:

• Religiosity
• subjective well-being
• gender
• social contacts
• religious social support

Acknowledgement

We are also grateful to the NYUAD Social Science Experimental Laboratory and Abu Dhabi University for assistance with recruiting participants.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1 The original WHOQOL-BREF survey consisted of 25 items, and was based on the WHOQOL-100 quality of life assessment. The shortened scale correlated highly with the original one, showed moderate to high reliability, α = .66 to α = .84, and was valid in measuring the WHOQOL-100’s domains (WHOQOL Group, 1998). This research used 10 of the original WHOQOL-BREF scale, and these items were selected based on the existing categories, specifically choosing the statements that were simple and straight-forward (see Appendix).

Additional information

Funding

This project was funded by a New York University Abu Dhabi (NYUAD) Science Capstone funding award, for which we are grateful.