Abstract
The purpose of this study was to elucidate the relationship between the collegiate religious, spiritual, and ideological climate and worldview commitment. As part of this process, 1,071 students responded to the Collegiate Religious and Spiritual Climate Survey, an empirically validated and reliable measure designed to assess dimensions of a campus’ religious, spiritual, and ideological climate. Results indicated that aspects of the psychological and behavioral climate were related to worldview commitment and these relationships were often conditioned upon students’ self-identified religious worldview. Implications for scholars and practitioners are discussed.
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Notes
In light of the majority status of Christianity in U.S. society, “religious majority” was defined as any Christian perspective. “Religious minority” was defined as any non-Christian religious perspective, while “non-religious” was defined as perspectives outside of a particular faith tradition.
As an additional analytic step and to provide more context for our second research question, we also performed confirmatory factor analyses on these items for each of the self-identified worldviews: religious majority, religious minority, and non-religious students. Although many item loadings and resultant scale reliabilities fell within acceptable limits, many did not. For this reason, we used factors derived from the entire sample for model construction. For more information on item loadings and scale derivation, see Bryant et al. (2009).
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Mayhew, M.J., Bryant, A.N. Achievement or Arrest? The Influence of the Collegiate Religious and Spiritual Climate on Students’ Worldview Commitment. Res High Educ 54, 63–84 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11162-012-9262-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11162-012-9262-7