Research That Matters (January 17 - 20, 2008)

Background and Purpose Does religiosity deter delinquency? Although researchers have debated this question for more than 30 years, its answer is still a contested issue. The purpose of the present study is to examine empirically the relationship between religiosity and the nation's most prevalent delinquent behavior—substance use. Specifically, the study seeks to accomplish the following goals: 1) to ascertain whether there is a statistically significant inverse relationship between individual-level religiosity and individual-level alcohol, tobacco, and marijuana use, across contexts; 2) to investigate the extent to which there is an inverse relationship between community-level religiosity and individual-level substance use; 3) to examine the impact of community-level religiosity on individual-level substance use, over and above the impact of individual-level religiosity; and 4) to test the hypothesis that the relationship between individual-level substance use and individual-level religiosity varies depending upon the community-level religiosity of the context in which the individual is nested.

Methods The present study uses multilevel modeling data analytic techniques (i.e., HLM) and large nationally representative samples of American public high schools (N = 227) and high school seniors (N = 16,595) to examine the research questions, with a specific focus on the relationships between individual-level religiosity, contextual-level (i.e., school) religiosity and adolescent's use of tobacco, alcohol, and marijuana.

Results The results indicate first, that the higher adolescents' level of religiosity, the less likely they are to use be current tobacco users, to engage in binge drinking, or to have used marijuana in the past year; second, that as the level of religiosity in a school increases, adolescents' frequency of cigarette use, binge drinking, and marijuana use decreases; third, that the religiosity of the school influences students' substance use, over and above their individual religiosity, but that this relationship exists only for marijuana; and fourth, that the strength of the relationship between individual-level religiosity and individual-level substance use varies depending upon the religiosity of the community, such that adolescents who are highly religious and in highly religious contexts are less likely to engage in binge drinking or marijuana use than those who are equally religious but in less religious contexts.

Conclusions and Implications Overall, the results of the study suggest that religiosity is an important, albeit often ignored, deterrent or protective factor against adolescent substance use. Accordingly, researchers, practitioners, policymakers and others interested in understanding the consequences, etiology, and prevention of substance use and abuse might do well to pursue more in-depth investigation of the potential role of individual and community factors like religiosity in efforts to address the important problems of substance use and abuse among America's young people. Future research should seek to understand the mechanisms through which individual-level and contextual-level religiosity influence young people's use of substances and other delinquent behaviors.