Spiritual development of emerging adults over the college years: A 4-year longitudinal investigation

Within the past decade, there has been a growing base of research literature on the developmental stage that Jeffrey Arnett (2004) termed emerging adulthood. While there is still much to be known about emerging adulthood in general, even less is known about the religious and spiritual lives of emerging adults. To date, few if any studies have specifically sought to explore the spiritual development of Evangelical Christian students attending an explicitly Christian college—an educational context that openly emphasizes matters relating to religion and spirituality as core educational outcomes (e.g., chapels, bible and theology classes). The current study was designed to explore religious and spiritual change over time among Evangelical Christian emerging adults measured at 8 time points across all 4 years of college. Given the paucity of research, the goal of this study was not to test specific hypotheses, but rather to observe and describe this change