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The Protective Effects of Religious Group Membership, Service Attendance, and Scripture Reading on Binge Drinking among College Students

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Abstract

Using a national sample of college students drawn from Wave 3 of the National Study of Youth and Religion (NSYR), the current study investigates the protective effects of religious group membership, service attendance, and scripture reading on binge drinking. Specifically, the study examines whether or not any effects exist independent of overall religiousness and the extent to which peers mediate these associations. Findings reveal that religious group membership and scripture reading are associated with significant reductions in binge drinking and that service attendance has a marginally significant association, after controlling for religiousness. The association involving service attendance is mediated by the number of friends who use drugs or drink heavily. Implications of the findings are discussed and include potential policy applications such as devoting more resources to campus ministry offices as allies in promoting healthy behavior, as well as creating programs geared toward students across the religiousness spectrum, including those designed for “seekers” or “skeptics.”

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Notes

  1. Another common approach involves estimating a path analysis and using a z-score to assess the statistical significance of the indirect effects (e.g., Baron & Kenny, 1986; Sobel, 1982). This is not appropriate for the current analysis because both linear and logistic regressions would be required to estimate the paths and the z-score calculation assumes that the same regression technique is used for all models.

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Acknowledgments

The National Study of Youth and Religion, http://youthandreligion.nd.edu/, whose data were used by permission here, was generously funded by Lilly Endowment Inc., under the direction of Christian Smith of the Department of Sociology at the University of Notre Dame.

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  1. Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice, Niagara University, Timon Hall, Niagara University, NY, 14109, USA

    Craig Rivera & Timothy Lauger

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Correspondence to Craig Rivera.

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The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest. This article does not contain any studies with human participants performed by any of the authors. A pre-existing data set was used that complied with all ethical standards for data collection, including informed consent of participants.

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Rivera, C., Lauger, T. The Protective Effects of Religious Group Membership, Service Attendance, and Scripture Reading on Binge Drinking among College Students. Pastoral Psychol 70, 125–140 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11089-021-00944-7

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