Assessing sectarian attitudes among Catholic adolescents in Scotland

ABSTRACT

Sectarianism is perceived as a serious issue in Scotland despite a lack of concrete evidence, according to the Advisory Group on Tackling Sectarianism. This paper addresses one of the gaps in knowledge, the attitudes of Catholic school pupils. Our research was designed to profile sectarian attitudes among a sample of Catholic school pupils in Scotland, using our own newly designed Scale of Catholic Sectarian Attitudes. The research assessed the influence of five sets of factors on shaping individual differences in sectarian attitudes: personal factors (sex and age), psychological factors (personality), religious factors (identity, belief, and practice), theological factors (exclusivism), and contextual factors (Catholic schools). The study draws on data provided by 797 13- to 15-year-old school pupils from schools in Scotland who self-identified as Roman Catholic. We offer a new tool for measuring attitudes to sectarianism and also findings that demonstrate that sectarian attitudes exist within the young Catholic community in Scotland and that this has possibly become part of a wider problem generated by the public visibility of religious diversity within an increasingly secular society. Further we find that Sectarian attitudes are higher among males than among females and are higher among nominal Catholics than among practising Catholics.

KEYWORDS:

• Catholic schools
• Scotland
• sectarianism
• Eysenck
• personality
• sex differences

Note

Young People’s Attitudes to Religious Diversity Project (AHRC Reference: AH/G014035/1) was a large-scale mixed methods research project investigating the attitudes of 13- to 16-year-old students across the United Kingdom. Students from a variety of socio-economic, cultural, ethnic and religious backgrounds from different parts of England, Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland, with the addition of London as a special case, took part in the study. Professor Robert Jackson was principal investigator and Professor Leslie J. Francis was co-investigator. Together they led a team of qualitative and quantitative researchers based in the Warwick Religions and Education Research Unit, within the Centre for Education Studies, University of Warwick. The project was part of the AHRC/ESRC Religion and Society Programme and ran from 2009 to 2012.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Stephen McKinney

Stephen McKinney is a Professor in the School of Education, University of Glasgow. He has published extensively on Catholic schooling, sectarianism and Catholic schools, Faith schooling and the impact of poverty on schooling. He is a visiting professor in Catholic Education at Newman University, an Associate of the Irish Institute for Catholic Studies and on the steering group for the Network for Researchers in Catholic Education.

Leslie J. Francis

Leslie J. Francis is Professor of Religions and Education and Director of the Warwick Religions and Education Research Unit at the University of Warwick, England, and Visiting Professor at York St John University, England.

Ursula McKenna

Ursula McKenna is Research Fellow within the Warwick Religions and Education Research Unit at the University of Warwick, England.