Assessing gender differences in the relationship between religious coping responses and alcohol consumption

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this study is to see if the use of religious coping responses is associated with alcohol intake. In addition, tests are conducted to see if the relationship between religion and alcohol use varies by gender. Data from a recent nationwide survey (N = 2173) indicate that greater use of religious coping responses is associated with less alcohol consumption. The findings further reveal that even though women use religious coping responses more often than men, the relationship between the use of religious coping responses and alcohol consumption is stronger for men than for women. This suggests that, with respect to alcohol consumption, men may benefit more from using religious coping responses than women. The theoretical implications of these results are discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• Religious coping
• alcohol use
• gender differences

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 A subsequent test revealed that the magnitude of the difference between the multiplicative term for Hypothesis 3 (b = −1.562) and the multiplicative term for Hypothesis 4 (b = −1.721) (i.e., −.16) is not statistically significant.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the John Templeton Foundation (07738).