Date of Award

2002

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Education (EdD)

Department

Educational Leadership

First Advisor

Gary Chamberlin, PHD

Abstract

Previous research has suggested a relationship between religiousness and various aspects of physical and mental health; however, an examination of the relationship between religious orientation and academic achievement appears to be an under-explored area of empirical research. The present study investigated the relationship of academic achievement and religious orientation of college-bound high school seniors. The Intrinsic and Extrinsic subscales of Allport's (Allport & Ross, 1967) Religious Orientation Scale and the Quest subscale of Batson's (Batson & Ventis, 1982) Religious Life Inventory were interspersed into a 32-item Likert-style questionnaire. The questionnaire was administered in both large group and small group format to college-bound high school seniors from three public high schools. Results yielded 295 usable questionnaires. Self-reported demographic data, measures of academic achievement, and religious orientation subscale mean scores were analyzed using an SPSS program. An analysis of correlations was run using Pearson's correlation coefficient and Spearman's nonparametric rank correlation test. Group median split scores were used to classify the participant pool into the quadrants of the Fourfold Typology (Allport, 1967; Hood, 1970). The Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) tests revealed that religiousness had a statistically significant effect on ACT composite scores, GPA, and class rank. Tukey's post hoc test was employed to discover which classifications of religiousness from the Fourfold Typology revealed ACT, GPA, or class rank mean scores that differed significantly. The findings indicated that females scored higher on all measures of religiousness, supporting existing research that suggests that women appear to be more religious than men (Batson et al, 1993). Female average group scores in all measures of academic achievement were higher, although males scored in the highest ranks of each measure. The major patterns found in the study indicate that there is a positive relationship between Intrinsic religiousness and academic achievement; that a meaningful “lived” religiousness is positively related to academic achievement. There was a negative relationship between Extrinsic religiousness and academic achievement, suggesting that a faith for utilitarian purposes embodies characteristics that are incongruous with the characteristics needed to achieve academically. There were no other consistent patterns in the findings. The mixed results of this study point to the need for further research into the relationship of spirituality and scholarship.

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