Impact of the College Experience upon Religious Involvement

The purpose of this study was to examine the impact of college exposure upon religious involvement and to compare and contrast the changing religiosity levels of students at secular and denomination colleges. Two independent dimensions of religious involvement – church attendance and belief in conventional religious tenets – comprised the operational definition of the dependent variable and a rather unusual procedure, the ex-post facto longitudinal design was utilized to measure the relationship between this factor and higher education. A further attempts was made to refine the hypotheses through introduction of the variable of subcultural affiliation derived from Clark and Trow’s typology of major college subcultures. Advisor: Alan P. Bate