Trajectories Of Religious/Spiritual Struggles Between Years 1 And 2 Of College: The Predictive Role Of Religious Belief Salience

Religious and spiritual struggles involve tensions, conflicts, and strains pertaining to religious and spiritual life. This research examined whether broad measures of religiousness predicted differences in the development and resolution of struggles over 1 year in a sample of undergraduates (N=451) from three U.S. universities: secular public (n=146), secular private (n=126), and faith-based Christian (n=179). Latent class growth analyses indicated 4 distinct trajectories of change in struggles. One group reported consistently low levels of struggles (n=298, 66% of total sample); another developed struggles over a 1-year period (n=100, 22%); a third reported high levels of struggles during both years (n=19, 4%); and the final group reported resolving their struggles over 1 year (n=34, 8%). Penalized multinomial logistic regressions indicated that religious belief salience predicted the development of struggles longitudinally. We discuss the implications of these findings.