Prior research in non-U.S. samples has found a complex nonlinear relationship between loneliness and age. This research has shown that established predictors of loneliness--poor health, being unmarried, living alone, and having infrequent social interactions--help to explain age differences in loneliness. However, while some variables were found…

Anti-scientific attitudes can impose substantial costs on societies. Can schools be an important agent in mitigating the propagation of such attitudes? This paper investigates the effect of the content of science education on anti-scientific attitudes, knowledge, and choices. The analysis exploits staggered reforms that reduce or expand the…

The present study assesses how education impacts religiosity. Education is instrumented using the changes in the Canadian school leaving age laws. The data are from the Canadian General Social Surveys collected between 1990 and 2011. The effects of education on both affiliation status and religious attendance are considered. Education is found to…

This study was conducted to determine if American public libraries located in an area of the country hostile to atheist (freethought) ideas collect atheist books at a lower rate than a region of the country more open to such ideas. The US General Social Survey was consulted to locate the contrasting regions. "New York Times" Best Seller…

Our original article espoused a simple way to recode religious groups on the General Social Survey (GSS) into historically meaningful categories and attempted to steer social scientists away from assigning these groups to a "Liberal-Moderate-Conservative" scale (Smith 1990). Among other problems, such scales create arbitrary cutpoints,…

A growing literature examines the correlates and sequelae of spiritual struggles. Particular attention has been focused on three specific types of such struggles: (a) divine, or troubled relationships with God; (b) interpersonal, or negative social encounters in religious settings; and (c) intrapsychic, or chronic religious doubting. To date,…

Age and Time disparities in young adult research populations are common because young adults are defined by varying age spans; members of Generation X and Millennial generations may both be considered young adults; study years vary, affecting populations; and qualitative methods with limited age/year samples are frequently utilized. The current…

This study focuses on one of the most significant recent innovations in the conceptualization and measurement of religiousness and spirituality, the Daily Spiritual Experience scale (DSES; Underwood (2006) "Archive for the Psychology of Religion/Archiv fur Religion Psychologie," 28, 181-218). Using data from 1998 and 2004 NORC General…

High religiousness has been consistently linked with a decreased likelihood of past infidelity but has been solely defined by religious service attendance, a limited assessment of a complex facet of life. The current study developed nine religiousness subscales using items from the 1998 General Social Survey to more fully explore the association…

Despite a large body of research on the influences of religion on family life and gender ideology, few studies examined how religion affects work-family strategies. One set of strategies involves making employment or family trade-off--strategies of devoting time or attention to either work or family in a situation in which one cannot devote the…

Prior research has shown that individuals living in the South express significantly less tolerant attitudes than the rest of the nation, while individuals residing in urban areas express significantly more tolerant attitudes than their rural peers. The authors seek to explain these generally unspecified Southern and urban effects by identifying…

The effects of religion and religiosity as measured by attendance at weekly religious services on the demand for private schooling is assessed. It is shown that Catholics, fundamentalist/evangelical Protestants, and respondents who attend religious services more often have a higher demand for private schooling. Data from the National Opinion…