Trajectories of Religious/Spiritual Struggles Between Years 1 and 2 of College: The Predictive Role of Religious Belief Salience

Religious and spiritual (r/s) struggles involve tensions, conflicts, and strains pertaining to r/s life. This research examined whether broad measures of religiousness predicted differences in the development and resolution of struggles over one year in a sample of undergraduates (N = 451) from three U.S. universities: secular public (n = 146), secular private (n = 126), and faith-based Christian (n = 179). Latent class growth analyses indicated four distinct trajectories of change in struggles. One group reported consistently low levels of struggles (n = 298, 66% of total sample); another developed struggles over a one-year period (n = 100, 22%); a third reported high levels of struggles during both years (n = 19, 4%); and the final group reported resolving their struggles over one year (n = 34, 8%). Penalized multinomial logistic regressions indicated that religious belief salience predicted the development of struggles longitudinally. We discuss the implications of these findings