Examining the Relationship between Pre-Collegiate Educational Experiences and Religious Affiliation

This paper explores the relationship between the type of school students experienced before college and how that schooling affected the students’ religious affiliation. The specific types of schools examined are public and private schools with private schools being further divided into religious and non-religious private schools. I explore the differences in religious importance among several groups including students who attended Catholic schools and those who did not, students who attended religious schools for varying lengths of time (low, medium, high, and no involvement), and students who had a choice in the schools they attended and those who did not. I also explored the difference in religious service attendance between students who attended religious schools and those who did not. My hypothesis yielded mostly insignificant results, but I developed two regression models that can predict the odds of a student being religious based on the significant predictors in the model. The most important predictors of religious importance included: whether the student had a choice in attending religious services or not, gender, age 26-35, whether the student believed their previous schooling has affected their religiosity, whether the student attends religious services with family, whether the student is Catholic, whether the student is Protestant, and whether the student attends religious services or not