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Posted: 5/30/03

Religious teens have stronger family ties

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. (RNS) –Teens who are members of religiously involved families are likely to have stronger family relationships than teens in families that are not religiously active, a new report shows.

The findings come from a report by the National Study of Youth and Religion, a four-year research project based at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

“All three dimensions of family and parental religious involvement analyzed here (family religious activity, parental religious service attendance and parental prayer) tend to be associated significantly with positive family relationship characteristics,” reads the executive summary of the report.

The findings are published in “Family Religious Involvement and the Quality of Family Relationships for Early Adolescents.”

Looking specifically at youth ages 12 to 14, the report found those in families heavily involved in religious activities are more likely to have strong relationships with their parents and participate in family activities and less likely to run away from home.

Eleven percent of youth fit into this category, where religious activity such as attending church, praying or reading Scriptures together takes place five or more days a week. In comparison, 36 percent of youth are part of families that do not engage in religious activities.

The findings are based on analysis of data from the 1997 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth that involved almost 9,000 students. The project that produced the study is funded by Lilly Endowment.