Associations of Religious Involvement and Mortality: A Critical Review

In this review we address the conflicts of previous research on associations between religious involvement and longevity. We will also discuss causes of conclusional variance within these studies. Our study of inconclusive research will equip individuals with insight about sources of disagreement and origins of variance within empirical studies on religiosity and longevity. A wide variety of sources were selected to represent the diversity of findings. Most selected studies identified psychosocial elements of religiosity and proposed a positive, negative, or no correlation with longevity. We reviewed the validity of each study and analyzed the proposed association with longevity. Numerous methodologically sound studies reported that religious faith decreases the risk of morbidity, while other studies proposed that religious faith increases the risk of morbidity. Causes of substantial disagreement among well conducted studies include challenges in developing reliable and valid measures of religiousness, confounding variables not well identified and controlled, sampling bias in study groups, and overstatement of conclusions without nuance. Consistent, unconfounded evidence is needed before a definite conclusion can be reached