Monday, May 23, 2005
College students highly religious, recent study says
On college campuses across the country, students are becoming increasingly engaged in religion and spirituality, according to a report released by the Higher Education Research Institute at UCLA last month.
Three-fourths of students surveyed are "searching for meaning/purpose in life," eight in 10 attended a religious service during the past year, more than two-thirds pray and four in 10 consider it "very important" that they adhere to religious teachings in everyday life.
Ohio University keeps similar statistics for its student body. In 2004-2005, 62 percent of first-year students said that spiritual development was an important part of adjusting to college and 81 percent said that it was also important to develop personal values and beliefs, according to a report on the Office of Institutional Research Web site (www.ohiou.edu/instres/involve/index.html).
UCLA's national study, "The Spiritual Life of College Students: A National Study of College Students' Search for Meaning and Purpose," was designed to "enhance understanding of how college students conceive spirituality, the role it plays in their lives, and how colleges and universities can play a more effective role in facilitating students' spiritual development," according to the report.
Funded by the John Templeton Foundation, a nonprofit organization that "encourages the moral and spiritual dimensions of life," the study encompassed more than 112,000 students attending 236 colleges and universities.
The fall 2004 College Students' Beliefs and Values Survey, from which the findings were drawn, was administered to first-year students in addition to a traditional freshman survey conducted by another UCLA research program. A follow-up survey will be administered in 2007 to track how attitudes about spirituality and religion have changed.
Responses were examined according to 12 predetermined scales -three measures of spirituality, five of religiousness and four other dimensions expected to be related to each. Those scales were then used to map trends within various demographics such as religious denomination and political affiliation, as well as those related to overall physical and mental well-being.
Though many consider measures of spirituality and religion to be closely related, the two have discernable differences.
Alexander Keefe, a professor in the department of Classics and World Religions, said that religion commonly refers to adhering to some traditional set of beliefs. Spirituality, on the other hand, doesn't necessarily require religious affiliation, but rather a belief in something bigger than yourself.
In a previous interview, Lynn Miller, pastor of Christ Lutheran Church, 69 Mill St., also touched upon the distinction.
"Religion for many people represents only the hierarchical institution. Spirituality emphasizes for many people more the personal seeking," she said.
According to the project's Web site (www.spirituality.ucla.edu), spirituality also reflects our "values and ideals, sense of who we are and where we came from, and beliefs about why we are here." That notion "captures those aspects of our experience that are not easy to define or talk about, such as inspiration, creativity, the mysterious, the sacred and the mystical."
Despite these differences, spirituality and religion are still closely related. According to the report, students who are strongly religious also tend to be highly spiritual on all measurements.
by Patrick Mayock
For The Post
patrick.mayock@ohiou.edu
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