The Association Between Level of Religiousness and Subjective General Health in Europe : Subjective measurements at four different European countries

Studies linking religion and its impact on humans have increased over time with health being the most studied outcome in statistical analysis. Even so, the use of variables, models and approaches has been homogenous being applied among similar groups and places. The aim of the thesis is for that reason to investigate to what extent there is an association between religiousness and health in Cyprus (n=3 355), Finland (n=4 058), Norway (n=4 691) and Ireland (n=6 869) adjusting for potential confounders age, gender and education. Logistic regression analyses were applied, including subjective level of religiousness as predictor and good subjective general health as outcome in conjunction with the Theory of Attachment. The data is collected from The European Social Survey from 2008, 2010 and 2012. Middle religious have significant higher odds of good health than individuals that categorized by themselves as Not at all religious in Cyprus, Norway and Ireland while adjusting for age and education. Low, Middle and High religious are significantly associated with good health in Finland compared to Not at all religious. There is an association between religiousness and health in the four European countries while age and education potentially confound the relationship in Norway and Ireland