New study finds most teens espouse parents’ religious beliefs

RALEIGH, N.C. — Contrary to widespread stereotypes, most American teen-agers are not alienated from organized religion, and as many as two-thirds closely agree with the religious beliefs of their parents, according to a new UNC-Chapel Hill study.

The findings released Jan. 13 are part of a four-year research project called the National Study of Youth and Religion. The study was based at the university’s Odum Institute for Research in Social Science.

Data for the study was culled from a national survey of 12th-graders sponsored by the National Institutes of Health. The youth and religion study analyzed responses to questions on the survey such as “How closely do your ideas agree with your parents’ about religion?” and “How good or bad a job is being done for the country as a whole by churches and religious organizations?”

The authors of the study, Dr. Christian Smith, Robert Faris, and Melinda Lundquist Denton, said their findings refute the notion of a “storm and stress” stereotype found in old clinical sampling biases and popular books on youth. They said more recent “solid” studies “of non-clinical adolescent populations … emphasize instead the diversity of adolescents’ experiences, the lack of inevitability in any youth outcome, and the relative low levels of intense turmoil in teen-agers’ lives.”

Smith, director of the study, and his co-authors reported that “only about 10 to 20 percent of adolescents manifest severe emotional disturbance,” which they said mirrors the adult population. In addition, the sociologists cited other studies that determined that “only between 5 and 10 percent of families see a dramatic decline in the quality of parent-child relationships during the teen-age years.”

The analysis of survey responses also found that 67 percent of the sampling of 12th-graders said their religious beliefs were mostly similar to those of their parents. Only 21 percent said their beliefs were mostly different or very different from their parents’ beliefs.

When asked about the influence and performance of churches in the United States, only 10 percent of the youth surveyed said churches were doing a poor job for the country. Twenty-three percent said churches were doing a fair job, and 49 percent believed they were doing a good or very good job.

Most adolescents in the survey also said they would like to see religious institutions’ degree of influence on society increase or stay the same. Twenty-eight percent wanted religion to maintain its current level of influence, while 41 percent said they would like religion to exert more influence on society.

The study also broke down responses demographically, and found that black youth were more positive about religion than are whites or other races. The authors said also that adolescent girls were “statistically more likely than boys to desire more social influence for churches.”

And as far as which teens appear most devout, the study reported that Baptist and Mormon youth appeared to be “the least alienated from organized religion.”

Published by Keener Communications Group, February 2004

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