Hayward George M
Department of Sociology, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
J Sci Study Relig. 2019 Jun;58(2):439-458. doi: 10.1111/jssr.12588. Epub 2019 Feb 1.
While numerous studies show a persistent inverse association between religion variables and adolescents' sexual behaviors, the nature of this relationship is not well understood. Specifically, many previous studies presuppose that the associations between adolescent religiosity and sexual behaviors are linear. However, a number of studies have also identified important nonlinearities of religious influence during adolescence, with highly religious individuals being distinct from their peers. Incorporating this knowledge into a theoretically-motivated modeling approach, this article provides a comparative analysis of functional forms describing the relationships between religiosity and adolescent sexual behaviors. Using data from two waves of the National Study of Youth and Religion, a linear functional form is compared with nonlinear alternatives that link multiple religion measures to outcomes of sexual activity. Results show that the majority of these relationships are best defined by nonlinear functional forms, suggesting that the influence of religiosity increases as individuals become more religious.
虽然众多研究表明宗教变量与青少年性行为之间存在持续的负相关关系，但这种关系的本质尚未得到充分理解。具体而言，许多先前的研究预先假定青少年宗教虔诚度与性行为之间的关联是线性的。然而，一些研究也发现了青春期宗教影响的重要非线性特征，宗教虔诚度高的个体与同龄人有所不同。本文将这一知识纳入基于理论的建模方法，对描述宗教虔诚度与青少年性行为之间关系的函数形式进行了比较分析。利用来自两轮全国青少年与宗教研究的数据，将线性函数形式与将多种宗教测量指标与性活动结果联系起来的非线性替代形式进行了比较。结果表明，这些关系中的大多数最好用非线性函数形式来定义，这表明随着个体宗教虔诚度的提高，宗教虔诚度的影响也会增加。
