Religious Involvement and Dynamics of Marijuana Use: Initiation, Persistence, and Desistence

Abstract

Studies that examine the effects of adolescent religiosity on the initiation of, persistence in, and desistence from delinquency are rare. Yet, religion may differentially affect dimensions of delinquency in the early life course. Therefore, using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health), we examine the relationship between measures of adolescent religion, as well as changes in religious involvement, and later patterns of marijuana use. We also examine the extent to which religious effects, if any, are mediated by key predictors of delinquency drawn from prominent criminological theories. The results suggest that the primary effect of religion on marijuana use is to prevent its initiation in the first place. Only part of religion's preventative effect on initiation is mediated by social bonds, delinquent peers, or self control. Although religious youth are less likely to ever use marijuana, adolescent religious involvement does not significantly predict desistence from marijuana use.

Acknowledgments

This research uses data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health), a project designed by J. Richard Udry, Peter S. Bearman, and Kathleen Mullan Harris, and funded by a grant P01-HD31921 from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, with cooperative funding from 17 other agencies. Special acknowledgment is due Ronald R. Rindfuss and Barbara Entwisle for assistance in the original design. Persons interested in obtaining data files from Add Health should contact Add Health, Carolina Population Center, 123 W. Franklin Street, Chapel Hill, NC 27516-2524. This research was supported by a grant from the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (2006-JF-FX-0072).

Notes

¹The vast majority of adolescents who were seniors in high school at Wave 1 were not re-interviewed at Wave 2. In addition, 4,783 adolescents who were eligible for Wave 3 were not interviewed again because they could not be located or were unable to be interviewed again. Analysis of non-response suggests that sample attrition introduces very little bias in estimates of marijuana use (less than half a percent), which we use for our dependent variable (Chantala et al. 2004).

²There are more desisters than there are initiators. This counterintuitive feature is due to the fact that many individuals began using marijuana sometime before Wave 1. Based on a question (from the first in-home survey) that asks about age at first marijuana use (“How old were you when you tried marijuana for the first time?”), we know that adolescents who use marijuana typically begin using around age 15 (the median age of first marijuana use is 14, while the modal age is 15). At Wave 1, adolescents in the sample are between 11 and 21 years of age. Therefore, many of the adolescents who use marijuana started using before Wave 1. Over time (Waves 2 and 3), some of these individuals (125 in this analysis) are later classified as desisters, while others were unstable and/or persistent users.

*p < .05; **p < .01. N = 7,331. Standard Errors are in parentheses.

*p < .05; **p < .01. N = 7,331.

³The indirect effect of adolescent religious involvement on marijuana use can be determined by subtracting the effect of adolescent religious involvement on marijuana use when the mediator is included in the model (model 2) from the effect of adolescent religious involvement on marijuana use when the mediator is not included in the model (model 1). Therefore, the indirect effect of adolescent religious involvement on marijuana use is from −.082 to −.071 = −.011. We are not aware of any method that can be used to determine if the indirect effects in a multinomial logistic regression are statistically significant (but see footnote 5 for supplemental analysis using ordinary least squares [OLS]). Dividing the indirect effect (−.011) by the total effect (−.082), however, yields the percentage of the total effect that is mediated or indirect. This provides an indication of the effect size (i.e., the larger the percentage, the larger the indirect effect).

⁴We conducted supplemental analysis using a measure of frequency of marijuana use. Adolescent religious involvement was significantly related to frequency of marijuana use, but parents’ religious involvement, self-identification as a born-again Christian, and religious literalism did not have significant effects on the frequency of marijuana use. Roughly 13% of the effect of adolescent religious involvement was mediated by parental attachment, 11% by school attachment, 41% by delinquent peers, 19% by self-control, and only 2% by negative emotions. All of the indirect effects were statistically significant, except for negative emotions (for models using OLS regression, which we used for the supplemental analysis, the statistical significance of indirect effects can be determined in STATA using the command sgmediation).

*p < .05; **p < .01.

†No change in religiosity is the omitted category.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jeffery T. Ulmer

JEFFERY T. ULMER is Associate Professor of Sociology and Crime, Law, and Justice. His published research has focused on courts and sentencing, criminological theory, race, ethnicity, and violence, religion and crime, symbolic interactionism, criminal enterprise, and the integration of qualitative and quantitative methods. He is the author of Social Worlds of Sentencing: Court Communities Under Sentencing Guidelines (1997, State University of New York Press), and coauthor (with Darrell Steffensmeier) of Confessions of a Dying Thief: Understanding Criminal Careers and Illegal Enterprise (2005, Aldine-Transaction), which won the 2006 Hindelang Award from the American Society of Criminology. His newest book (with John Kramer), Sentencing Guidelines: Lessons from Pennsylvania, was published in 2009 by Lynne Rienner Publishers.

Scott A. Desmond

SCOTT A. DESMOND is a Visiting Assistant Professor in the School of Public and Enviornmental Affaris at Indiana University Purde University-Indianapolis. Although his research focuses primarily on adolescent religious development, and how adolescent religiosity influences juvenile delinquency, he also studies how neighborhood characteristics and self-control contribute to crime, delinquency, and substance use.

Sung Joon Jang

SUNG JOON JANG is Associate Professor of Sociology and Research Fellow in the Program on Prosocial Behavior of the Institute for Studies of Religion at Baylor University. His research focuses on the effects of family, school, peers, religion, and community on crime and deviance. He is a co-principal investigator of a project on character development and spirituality among Boy Scouts and Eagle Scouts.

Byron R. Johnson

BYRON R. JOHNSON is Distinguished Professor of the Social Sciences and Director of the Institute for Studies of Religion, both at Baylor University. He has published extensively on the role of religion in preventing delinquency and fostering prosocial behavior.