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Abstract
A research project conducted in 2003–2006, the Spirit of Generation Y, using both extended interviews and a nationwide survey, revealed three main strands in the spirituality of young Australians: traditional, alternative and humanist. Their involvement in traditional religions was declining, like that of their parents, and although some adopted alternative spiritualities, the stronger trends were toward indifference or humanism. Eclecticism in worldviews and cautiously relativistic values seem to be responses to an uncertain world, in which isolated individuals have only fragile support structures for their identity.
Notes
1. The research team which conducted the study comprised M. Mason, R. Webber, A. Singleton and P. Hughes. A series of detailed reports on the study is available at http://dlibrary.acu.edu.au/research/ccls/spir/sppub/sppub.htm. The concluding report is due for publication in book form in July 2007.
2. The boundaries defining the Baby‐Boomer generation and Generations X and Y are debated—some authors include in Generation Y those born 1976–90; others date them five years later. Here, ‘Generation Y’ refers to the cohort born between 1976 and 1990, following ‘Generation X’ (1961–75) and the ‘Baby‐Boomers’ (1946–60).
3. For technical details of the survey, see Appendix II and for the project questionnaire, Appendix IV, both available on the project website (see note 1).
4. Census data for those aged 10–24 years in August 2001 were compared with survey data on respondents who, three and a half years later, when the survey took place in February 2005, were aged 13–27 years. The percentages are slightly different from those in Table because of the omission of those aged 28–29 from Table .
5. See the evidence cited in Mason et al. (Citation2007), chapter 2, note 23.
