Harry M. Gibson

God images and self-worth among adolescents in Scotland

A sample of 866 young people between the ages of 12 and 15 in Scotland completed measures of self-worth and God images. The data demonstrate a positive relationship between self-worth and images of God as loving and forgiving, and a negative relationship between self-worth and images of God as cruel and punishing.

Creationism, Scientism, Christianity and Science: A Study in Adolescent Attitudes.

Abstract Both religious educators and science educators show concern for the development of positive pupil attitudes towards their respective curriculum areas, both as an educational objective in its own right and as a key predisposition for realising other educational objectives. While growing bodies of research have charted the personal, social, environmental and curriculum correlates of the development of attitudes towards science and religion, little attention has been given to the empirical relationship between these two attitudinal areas. This is surprising given the vast theoretical debate on the relationship between science and religion. In the present study attitude towards Christianity and interest in science are measured among a sample of 729 16‐18 year olds in Scotland. The data demonstrate a significant negative correlation between attitude towards Christianity and interest in science. Path analysis is then employed to explore the antecedents of this observed relationship. After taking into a...

Attitude towards Christianity, Creationism, Scientism and Interest in Science Among 11‐15 Year Olds

Six thousand and ninety five eleven‐fifteen year old pupils in non‐denominational, Roman Catholic and independent schools in Scotland completed scales of attitude towards Christianity, interest in science, scientism and perception of Christianity as necessarily involving creationism. The data are analysed to explore the role of scientism and perception of Christianity as necessarily involving creationism in accounting for the apparent negative relationship between attitude towards Christianity and interest in science. Both factors are found to contribute to pupils’ difficulty in combining interest in science with positive attitudes towards Christianity. The implications of these findings for curriculum development are discussed.

Attitude toward Christianity and the Transition to Formal Operational Thinking

Using a sample of 6,098 pupils in Scotland aged between 11 and 15 years, this paper tests the hypothesis that attitude toward Christianity will be significantly affected by the transition from concrete operational to formal operational thinking. Since churchgoing and gender are known to influence attitude toward Christianity and since ability has been shown to influence the emergence of formal operational thinking, male and female churchgoing and non‐churchgoing pupils drawn from selective and non‐selective schools are tested separately. The data give no evidence to support the hypothesis that the transition to formal operational thinking affects attitude toward Christianity in any way.

A revised semantic differential scale distinguishing between negative and positive God images

A sample of 755 school pupils between the ages of 11 and 18 years completed the Benson and Spilka semantic differential measure of God images. Factor analysis indicated the advantages of re‐scoring the measure as an eight item unidimensional index, defining semantic space relating to God images ranging from negative affect to positive affect.

The influence of Protestant Sunday schools on attitudes towards Christianity among 11‐15 year olds in Scotland

This study explores the influence of Sunday schools on shaping attitudes towards Christianity among 4,079 eleven to fifteen year olds attending state maintained schools in Dundee who identified themselves as belonging to either no religious group or to non‐Roman Catholic denominations. The data demonstrate that, after controlling for the influence of personal and parental church attendance, age and sex, Sunday schools make a small significant contribution to the promotion of favourable attitudes towards Christianity and the size of this contribution is related to the number of years over which attendance took place. This positive finding is discussed in light of the negative view of Sunday schools promoted through some recent literature on the churchs ministry among children and young people. It is argued that further research is now needed which is able to compare the influence of attendance at Sunday school with the influence of attendance at church services during the years of childhood on subsequent ...

Attitudes to Religion and Science Among Schoolchildren Aged 11 to 16 Years in a Scottish City

This paper gives details of a survey undertaken in Dundee (Scotland) in 1986 among 6,653 secondary school pupils, aged 11 to 16 years, from non-denominational, denominational and independent schools. The Francis Attitude Scale ASC 4B was used in connection with the attitude to religion items. The main aim of the research was to discover what are the most salient factors or group of factors involved in the formation and continuation of young peoples attitudes to Christianity within a secular, science-orientated society. The study focuses upon parental encouragement, personal Church attendance and peer group practice as the major determining factors and seeks to explore the impact of young peoples attitudes to science, and in particular their creationist and scientistic beliefs, upon their attitudes to Christianity.

Television, Pop Culture and the Drift from Christianity during Adolescence

While previous research has mapped independently the two phenomena of adolescent drift from Christianity and growing affiliation to teenage pop culture, the present study explores the relationship between these two trends among a sample of 5,432 pupils between the ages of eleven and fifteen years. The new data confirm both trends, but indicate that these two trends operate independently of each other. In other words, there is no evidence to suggest that the churches should be suspicious of teenage pop culture in fostering or accelerating adolescent religious disaffection.

Personality and Christian Fundamentalism

This paper examines the relationship between personality and Christian fundamentalist beliefs among adolescents. It uses the results of recent empirical research among 800 schoolchildren, aged 11-15 years, in Dundee (Scotland).

Adolescents’ attitudes to prayer

Contemporary attitudes to prayerand prayer habits are explored among 900 adolescents attending non‐denominational secondary schools in Dundee, Scotland. The results reveal that a high proportion of the sample never pray. This paper looks at some possible explanations for this, including the difficulties found with petitionary prayer. It examines the impact of sex, age and church attendance on the responses of the pupils.