Research That Matters (January 17 - 20, 2008)

The main purpose of this study is to systematically examine research conducted over the past 30 years regarding the effects of religiosity on adolescent sexual behaviors. The present study is a partial replication of a systematic review by Johnson et al. (2000) on the effect of religion on delinquent behaviors. Johnson and his colleagues found that there is a consistent negative relationship between religiosity and deviance in the most rigorous research. Given that various types of delinquent behaviors are related to religiosity in different ways, the present study focuses solely on adolescent sexual behavior in order to avoid masking effects and variations.

Studies used in this systematic review were gathered from peer-reviewed journals dating from 1977 to 2006. The databases PsycInfo, Social Work Abstract, Social Science Abstract, and SocioIndex were searched using the key terms religion, religiosity, sex, and sexual behavior. Over 150 studies were found that contained some measure of religion and religious variables. Of those 150, only 34 focused on adolescents in the United States and therefore were included in this analysis.

The soundness of the empirical evidence was assessed according to the sampling strategy, measurement of religiosity, and the quality of research methodology. Regarding sampling strategy, only four studies used random sampling. As for religious measurement, 68% of the studies used only one or two dimensions of religiosity, including church attendance and the importance of religion in the subjects' lives. To assess the quality of research methodology, the eleven criteria proposed in Cook and Campbell (1979) were used (e.g., specification of reliability of measurement, use of longitudinal data, mono-operation bias, multivariate statistics). The 34 articles used had an average score of .59 on the quality index, which has a score range of 0 to1. The intra-rater reliability ranged from .94 to .96 for all measures examined.

While no study suggests a positive relationship between religiosity and sexual behaviors, ten studies showed that some dimension of religiosity had no effect on adolescent sexual behavior. These ten studies were ranked higher in terms of quality index (.64) than the studies that concluded that religion had a negative effect on adolescent sexuality (.59). Although there is greater consensus that religiosity may be more strongly and negatively related to adolescent sexual behavior than to other types of delinquency, this should be more fully explored before any firm conclusions can be drawn.

Overall, the present study supports the previous findings that religiosity plays an important role in deciding whether or not to engage in sexual behaviors; religious adolescents tend to have fewer sexual experiences. Given the detrimental consequences of adolescent sexual behavior including teen pregnancy, the social work profession needs to develop a better understanding of religious traditions to address adolescent sexual behaviors.

References Johnson, B., De Li, S., Larson, D., & McCullough, M. (2000). A systematic review of the religiosity and delinquency literature. Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice, 16, 1, 32-52.

Cook, T. & Campbell, D. (1979). Quasi-experimentation: Design & analysis issues for field settings? Boston: Houghton-Mifflin.