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Religious hope, but not a general sense of hope, is associated with change in chronic conditions over time

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Abstract

Many studies examine the relationship between religion and health with cross-sectional data. Using data that were gathered at two points in time, the purpose of the current study is to see if involvement in religion is associated with the course of illness over time. The core measure of religion in this study is a religious sense of hope. Data were also gathered on a general (i.e., overall) sense of hope. The physical health outcome measure is a simple count of the number of chronic conditions that currently affect study participants. All the participants in this study were at least 18 years of age. The data are from a nationwide longitudinal survey that was conducted in the United States (N = 573). The results indicate that religious hope, but not a general sense of hope, is associated with change in the number of chronic conditions over time.

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The data that were used in this study are available from the first-listed author upon request.

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Funding

This research was support by grants from the John Templeton Foundation (40077).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Health Behavior and Health Education, School of Public Health, University of Michigan, 1420 Washington Heights, Ann Arbor, MI, 48109-2029, USA

    Neal Krause

  2. University of Miami, Coral Gables, FL, USA

    Gail Ironson

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  1. Neal Krause
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  2. Gail Ironson
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Contributions

Both authors contributed to the study conception and design. Material preparation and data collection were supervised by Neal Krause. The analyses were conducted by Neal Krause. The fist draft of the manuscript was written by Neal Krause and Gail Ironson commented on previous versions of the manuscript. Both authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to Neal Krause.

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Ethics approval

All procedures performed in this study were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and the 1964 Helsinki Declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards. The Institutional Review Board at the University of Miami reviewed and approved our study protocol (10/2/2019; 20190928).

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All study participants were required to sign an informed consent statement.

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Neither author has any conflict of interest nor do either author has any financial or non-financial interests to declare.

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Krause, N., Ironson, G. Religious hope, but not a general sense of hope, is associated with change in chronic conditions over time. Curr Psychol 43, 3220–3233 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-023-04581-6

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