Social context and the importance of religious faith in the lives of American teenagers: an exploration of family, school, and geography

This paper examines the relationship between three contexts -- family, school, and geography -- and the salience of religion for American adolescents above and beyond the frequency with which they attend religious services. Using ordered logistic regression and data from the National Study of Youth and Religion, I find that while select family, school, and geography variables are significantly related to adolescent religious salience, no school or geographic context variables are significant when combined with family context in a final model. This suggests that while all three contexts are capable of impacting adolescent religious salience, family, as the most proximate context, may have the strongest and most immediate influence. Chow tests reveal that the three contexts operate in similar ways for all religious traditions