Religious doubt and identity formation: salient predictors of adolescent religious doubt

Journal of Psychology and Theology, Winter, 2008 by Keith A. Puffer, Kris G. Pence, T.martin Graverson, Michael Wolfe, Ellen Pate, Stacy Clegg

From the Religious Doubts Scale (Altemeyer, 1988), respondents indicated three main doubts or reasons for their doubts. These include doubting if "religion makes people better" (n = 418; M = 1.65) and if they had "developed their own ideas about religion" (n = 400; M = 1.44). Participants also doubted because they felt "rebellious or resentment over being told how to behave and what to believe" (n = 388; M = 1.53). But, in general the amount of doubt expressed by respondents was relatively small, a finding similar to other studies (Hunsberger et al., 2002). The averages of the triad ranged from "a little bit" (a value of 1) to a "mild" amount of doubt (a value of 2) on a scale of 0 to 5.

Pearson correlations, means, and standard deviations among the four identity statuses and six religious life constructs are presented in Table 1 Concerning the religious doubt measures, a few outstanding results emerged. First, three of the four expected relationships of religious doubting-quest (QRO) and religious doubting-beliefs (RDS) with the identity status scales occurred; the only exception was the positive association with diffusion. Second, the small positive correlation between QRO and RDS indicates sufficient common ground between the constructs, but enough distinction preventing them from being considered redundant (Tabachnick & Fidell, 1996). Third, the negative associations that QRO and RDS have with religious maturity (SMI) were not anticipated, but the inverse relationships with religious satisfaction (RWB) and intrinsic motive (IRO) were. However, the r-values are small as consistently noted in other studies (Kirkpatrick, 1993; Watson et al., 1998; Wong-McDonald, 1999).

TABLE 1
Intercorrelations, Means, and Standard Deviations of Religious and
Identity Status Variables

             RWB        IRO          ERO          SMI       RDS

RWB       --
IRO        .59 **
ERO       -.28 **     -.45 **
SMI        .59 **      .45 **     -.18 **
RDS       -.35 **     -.24 **      .12 **      -.42 **
QRO       -.19 **     -.15 **       ns         -.11 **
DIF       -.29 **     -.32 **      .16 **      -.36 **      .22 **
FOR       -.10 *        ns         .19 **      -.17 **      ns
MOR       -.30 **     -.25 **      .18 **      -.40 **      .31 **
ACH         ns          ns         .12 **       .15 **      ns

Means     52.9        31.2        16.5        133.8       10.9
SD         7.7         6.7         4.7         18.4        8.6

            QRO        DIF         FOR       MOR     ACH

RWB
IRO
ERO
SMI
RDS
QRO        .31 **
DIF        .09 *
FOR       -.15 **      .19 **
MOR        .24 **      .42 **      .24 **
ACH        .13 **       ns          ns         ns     --

Means     54.5        17.4        17.1       16.4    22.9
SD        13.8         4.1         5.0        4.9     5.1

Note: n=600; * p < .05, ** p < .01. RWB = Religious Well-being
Scale; IRO= Intrinsic Religious Orientation subscale; ERO=Extrinsic
Religious Orientation subscale; SMI=Spiritual Maturity Index;
RDS=Religious Doubts Scale; QRO=Quest Scale/religious doubting-quest;
DIF=diffused identity subscale; FOR=foreclosed identity subscale;
MOR=moratorium identity subscale; and ACH=achieved identity subscale.