Religion's relationships with weight perception and weight control behavior were examined using data (3032 adults aged 25-74) from the National Survey of Midlife Development in the United States. Religion was conceptualized as denomination, religious attendance/practice, religious social support, religious commitment, religious application, and religious identity. Weight perception was conceptu...

This study examines in a preliminary manner the relationship between multiple facets of religion/spirituality and depression in treatment-seeking adolescents. One hundred seventeen psychiatric outpatients aged 12 to 18 completed the brief multidimensional measure of religiousness/spirituality, the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI), a substance abuse inventory. Controlling for substance abuse and ...

The international religious data in the World Christian Database (WCD), and its print predecessor, the World Christian Encyclopedia (WCE) have been used frequently in academic studies and the popular press. Scholars have raised questions about the WCD’s estimates categories, and potential bias, but the data have not yet been systematically assessed. We test the reliability of the WCD by compari...

This study explores the role of social spaces in religious worldview Central and Eastern European region through a comprehensive values spanning nearly three decades. The analysis focuses on differences between non-religious people different during this period. Drawing insights spatial turn, provides new way understanding impact emergence values. For first time, attempts to verify influence spe...

Do political-Islamic elites need to be democrats for participation in democracy, how do their values compare to secular elites’, and how do their values change through participation and affect democratization itself? A comparative-systematic content analysis of three Islamic-conservative and two pro-secular Turkish newspapers over nine years shows that, overall, political-Islamic elites adopt d...

Background and Objectives: The awareness of status of high risk behaviors among students and the identification of their associated factors are of paramount importance. They can help university authorities and planners to perform effective interventions in order to prevent these behaviors. The aim of this study was to evaluate the relationship between the quality of life, psychological well-bei...

The Norwegian health authorities buy one third of their addiction treatment from private institutions run by organizations and trusts. Several of these are founded on religious values. The aim of the study was to investigate such value-based treatment and the patients’ experiences of spirituality and religiousness as factors of meaning-making in rehabilitation. The study was performed in an exp...

In this thesis, I outline the normative relevance of religious political parties as carriers of values in the context of contemporary political theory. The central argument of my thesis is that religious political parties are, in ideal terms, vital institutional tools for channelling religious claims into the public political realm of liberal democratic polities, in a way that favours democracy...