For many individuals, religious development begins in the family. Previous
literature has confirmed this assumption and demonstrated that parents play a dominant
role in the development process. There is a gap in the current literature regarding how
other family members could also potentially contribute to religious development. This
project takes the first step towards understanding how siblings may influence religious
development by investigating the extent to which siblings share similar religiosity levels.
Hierarchical linear models are applied to data from the National Longitudinal Study of
Adolescent Health in order to assess whether siblings share similar religiosity levels.
This project also investigates potential explanations of this similarity.
The results of this thesis demonstrate that siblings share common levels of
religiosity. The similarity was still moderate after controlling for known predictors of
adolescent religiosity such as parental influence, religious affiliation, race, and age.
Sibling communication also explained a small proportion of sibling religious similarity.
The results of this project leave open the possibility that siblings may contribute to one
another’s religious development. Suggestions for future research are discussed.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:tamu.edu/oai:repository.tamu.edu:1969.1/149208 |
| Date | 02 October 2013 |
| Creators | Field, Layton |
| Contributors | McIntosh, William Alexander, Ackerman, Jeff, Gatson, Sarah |
| Source Sets | Texas A and M University |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
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