Young people's attitudes to religious diversity : socialising agents and factors emerging from qualitative and quantitative data of a nation-wide project in the UK

This article is based on data arising from focus group discussions with young people in British schools, to draw out socialising influences and factors that shape their approaches to religious diversity. It explores questions such as: is religious socialisation taking place in the home, with active participation in religious communities, or is religious socialisation weakening from generation to generation? How does religious socialisation (or its lack) differ between and within religions and between particular localities? Which factors facilitate or impede socialising processes? These questions are addressed in the light of discussions with young people and survey results. The data arise from a project (2009–2012) in the Warwick Religions and Education Research Unit at the University of Warwick, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council/Arts and Humanities Research Council Religion and Society Programme, which applied a mixed methods approach to explore the attitudes of 13–16-year-old pupils across the UK towards religious diversity