IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/sagope/v5y2015i4p2158244015612876.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Church Attendance and Religious Experience

Author

Listed:
  • Marianne Nilsen Kvande
  • Christian Andreas Klöckner
  • Michael E. Nielsen

Abstract

Previous studies have shown that gender may moderate the relationship between religiousness and mental health in most countries, but few studies have been conducted in Norway and Denmark. This study examined gender differences in religious experiences and church attendance as predictors of existential well-being among 295 women and 233 men from the general Norwegian population. Analyses showed that the structural equation models for women and men did not differ significantly on the global level. The models for women and men, however, showed different patterns. Among men, church attendance and negative religious experiences predicted existential well-being; among women, positive and negative religious experiences were related to existential well-being, but church attendance was not. The present findings suggest that men may benefit more from active religiousness, whereas women may benefit more from affective religiousness. Comparing these results with research in other cultural contexts, we find that different operationalizations of church attendance yield the same types of patterns across cultural contexts. Consequently, the benefits of religiousness may be similar for women and men irrespective of cultural context.

Suggested Citation

  • Marianne Nilsen Kvande & Christian Andreas Klöckner & Michael E. Nielsen, 2015. "Church Attendance and Religious Experience," SAGE Open, , vol. 5(4), pages 21582440156, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:sagope:v:5:y:2015:i:4:p:2158244015612876
    DOI: 10.1177/2158244015612876
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/2158244015612876
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/2158244015612876?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Maselko, Joanna & Kubzansky, Laura D., 2006. "Gender differences in religious practices, spiritual experiences and health: Results from the US General Social Survey," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 62(11), pages 2848-2860, June.
    2. Michael J. McFarland, 2010. "Religion and Mental Health Among Older Adults: Do the Effects of Religious Involvement Vary by Gender?," The Journals of Gerontology: Series B, The Gerontological Society of America, vol. 65(5), pages 621-630.
    3. Fuhrer, R. & Stansfeld, S. A., 2002. "How gender affects patterns of social relations and their impact on health: a comparison of one or multiple sources of support from "close persons"," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 54(5), pages 811-825, March.
    4. Christopher Ellison & Daisy Fan, 2008. "Daily Spiritual Experiences and Psychological Well-being Among US Adults," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 88(2), pages 247-271, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Christopher Ellison & Jinwoo Lee, 2010. "Spiritual Struggles and Psychological Distress: Is There a Dark Side of Religion?," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 98(3), pages 501-517, September.
    2. Laura Upenieks & Matthew A. Andersson & Markus H. Schafer, 2021. "God, Father, Mother, Gender: How Are Religiosity and Parental Bonds During Childhood Linked to Midlife Flourishing?," Journal of Happiness Studies, Springer, vol. 22(7), pages 3199-3220, October.
    3. Liamputtong, Pranee & Suwankhong, Dusanee, 2015. "Therapeutic landscapes and living with breast cancer: The lived experiences of Thai women," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 128(C), pages 263-271.
    4. Vonneilich, Nico & Lüdecke, Daniel & von dem Knesebeck, Olaf, 2020. "Educational inequalities in self-rated health and social relationships – analyses based on the European Social Survey 2002-2016," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 267(C).
    5. Ilisa Fajriyati & Adi Zakaria Afiff & Gita Gayatri & Sri Rahayu Hijrah Hati, 2022. "Attributes Influencing Overall Tourist Satisfaction and Its Consequences for Muslim-Majority Destination," SAGE Open, , vol. 12(1), pages 21582440211, January.
    6. Adam B. Cohen & Kathryn A. Johnson, 2017. "The Relation between Religion and Well-Being," Applied Research in Quality of Life, Springer;International Society for Quality-of-Life Studies, vol. 12(3), pages 533-547, September.
    7. Jin You & Helene Fung & Peter Vitaliano, 2020. "The pattern of social support seeking and its socio-demographic variations among older adults in China," European Journal of Ageing, Springer, vol. 17(3), pages 341-348, September.
    8. Jane Cooley Fruehwirth & Sriya Iyer & Anwen Zhang, 2019. "Religion and Depression in Adolescence," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 127(3), pages 1178-1209.
    9. Landstedt, Evelina & Almquist, Ylva B. & Eriksson, Malin & Hammarström, Anne, 2016. "Disentangling the directions of associations between structural social capital and mental health: Longitudinal analyses of gender, civic engagement and depressive symptoms," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 163(C), pages 135-143.
    10. Clouston, Sean A.P. & Quesnel-Vallée, Amélie, 2012. "The role of defamilialization in the relationship between partnership and self-rated health: A cross-national comparison of Canada and the United States," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 75(8), pages 1342-1350.
    11. Berggren, Niclas & Ljunge, Martin, 2017. "Does Religion Make You Sick? Evidence of a Negative Relationship between Religious Background and Health," Working Paper Series 1173, Research Institute of Industrial Economics.
    12. Jennifer A Boisvert & W Andrew Harrell, 2013. "The impact of spirituality on eating disorder symptomatology in ethnically diverse Canadian women," International Journal of Social Psychiatry, , vol. 59(8), pages 729-738, December.
    13. Aniruddha Das & Stephanie Nairn, 2016. "Editor's choice Religious Attendance and Physiological Problems in Late Life," The Journals of Gerontology: Series B, The Gerontological Society of America, vol. 71(2), pages 291-308.
    14. Ahmed M. Abdel-Khalek & David Lester, 2012. "Constructions of religiosity, subjective well-being, anxiety, and depression in two cultures: Kuwait and USA," International Journal of Social Psychiatry, , vol. 58(2), pages 138-145, March.
    15. Fabio Zagonari, 2016. "Which Attitudes Will Make us Individually and Socially Happier and Healthier? A Cross-Culture and Cross-Development Analytical Model," Journal of Happiness Studies, Springer, vol. 17(6), pages 2527-2554, December.
    16. Eriksson, Malin & Ng, Nawi, 2015. "Changes in access to structural social capital and its influence on self-rated health over time for middle-aged men and women: A longitudinal study from northern Sweden," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 130(C), pages 250-258.
    17. James Schuurmans-Stekhoven, 2013. "“As a Shepherd Divideth his Sheep from the Goats”: Does the Daily Spiritual Experiences Scale Encapsulate Separable Theistic and Civility Components?," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 110(1), pages 131-146, January.
    18. Fujihara, Satoko & Tsuji, Taishi & Nakagomi, Atsushi & Miyaguni, Yasuhiro & Hanazato, Masamichi & Muto, Go & Kondo, Katsunori, 2023. "Association of community-level social capital with dementia: A multilevel nine-year longitudinal study using data from the Japan Gerontological Evaluation Study," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 338(C).
    19. Ângela Leite & Ana Ramires & Diogo Guedes Vidal & Hélder Fernando Pedrosa e Sousa & Maria Alzira Pimenta Dinis & Alexandra Fidalgo, 2021. "Hierarchical Cluster Analysis of Human Value Priorities and Associations with Subjective Well-Being, Subjective General Health, Social Life, and Depression across Europe," Social Sciences, MDPI, vol. 10(2), pages 1-25, February.
    20. Weerakkody, Vishanth & Sivarajah, Uthayasankar & Mahroof, Kamran & Maruyama, Takao & Lu, Shan, 2021. "Influencing subjective well-being for business and sustainable development using big data and predictive regression analysis," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 131(C), pages 520-538.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:sagope:v:5:y:2015:i:4:p:2158244015612876. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.