Teenage Religiosity and Changes in Marijuana Use During the Transition to Adulthood

Few studies have examined the effect of religiosity on the initiation of, persistence in, and desistence from delinquency. Yet religiosity may differentially affect these dimensions of delinquency in the early life course. Using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health), we study the relationship between religiosity and patterns of marijuana use. The results suggest that the primary effect of religiosity on marijuana use is to prevent its initiation in the first place. Religious youths are significantly more likely never to use marijuana than to initiate marijuana use or become persistent marijuana users. Although religious youths are less likely ever to use marijuana, adolescent religiosity does not significantly predict desistance from marijuana use. Furthermore, adolescent religiosity does not differentiate between never using and desistance, intermittent use and desistance, or persistent use and desistance.  This research uses data from Add Health, a project directed by Kathleen Mullan Harris and designed by J. Richard Udry, Peter S. Bearman, and Kathleen Mullan Harris at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and funded by grant P01-HD31921 from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, with cooperative funding from twenty-three other federal agencies and foundations. Special acknowledgment is due to Ronald R. Rindfuss and Barbara Entwisle for assistance in the original design. Information on how to obtain the Add Health data is available at http://www.cpc. unc.edu/addhealth. No direct support was received from grant P01-HD31921 for this analysis. † This research was supported by a grant from the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (2006-JF-FX-0072). Ulmer, Desmond, Jang, and Johnson: Teenage Religiosity and Later Marijuana Use 3 Criminal and delinquent careers have particular dynamics: initiation, persistence, and desistance (Blumstein et al. 1986; Thornberry and Krohn 2005). Of the dynamics of delinquency and crime, desistance is particularly understudied (Bushway, Thornberry, and Krohn 2003; Giordano et al. 2008), and even fewer studies have examined religion’s role in desistance from delinquency, as compared to initiation or abstinence, or in intermittent delinquency. However, many studies support the notion that religiosity should promote abstinence from delinquent acts (Baier and Wright 2001; Johnson et al. 2000), and there are reasons to expect that religiosity could foster desistance from crime and delinquency (Chu 2007; Giordano et al. 2008; Schroeder and Frana 2009). That is, once individuals become involved in deviant behavior, religion might help to steer them away from such behavior and thus from longer criminal careers (Giordano et al. 2008; Johnson 2009). Alternative expectations are also plausible. Once an individual becomes involved in delinquency, religiosity might not be able to override other influences that foster persistence in delinquent behavior (Giordano et al. 2008). Furthermore, if offending dynamics have distinct causes (Blumstein et al. 1986), then perhaps religiosity affects some dimensions of delinquency (say, initiation but not desistence or vice versa) but not others. These research questions have not often been examined, and they continue to remain understudied. To address these issues, we explore the effect of religious involvement during adolescence on changes in marijuana use between adolescence and young adulthood. To what extent does adolescent religiosity help to explain the initiation of marijuana use during adolescence and young adulthood, as compared to its persistence, intermittent use, or desistance? We answer this question using Waves I to III of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health), which contain suitable measures of religiosity, marijuana use, and other important predictors. RELIGION AND CHANGES IN DELINQUENCY Considerable evidence now exists that religious involvement exerts meaningful direct and indirect influences on delinquency, though the effects are sometimes modest in comparison to other predictors of delinquency derived from social learning, social bonding, self-control, and strain theories (see reviews by Baier and Wright 2001; Johnson 2009; Johnson et al. 2000; Regnerus 2006). Although many scholars have examined religiosity and overall participation in crime and delinquency, there are few studies of how religiosity affects the dynamics of delinquency, such as abstinence versus initiation and persistence versus desistence. For example, despite its practical and theoretical significance, there has been very little research on the role of religion in desistance from crime and delinquency. Our study helps to fill this gap. 4 Interdisciplinary Journal of Research on Religion Vol. 6 (2010), Article 3 As we noted, substantial research indicates that religious involvement can prevent overall involvement (e.g., initiation) in delinquency. However, little is known about the processes by which religion might foster desistance from crime and delinquency, and there has been little theorizing about the issue (Schroeder and Frana 2009). Nevertheless, it is reasonable to expect that a background of religious involvement might not only foster abstinence from forms of delinquency such as marijuana use, but also later encourage desistance from use if one does become involved. A youth might experiment with or use marijuana for a time, perhaps engaging in the kinds of learning processes related to marijuana use described by Becker (1953). However, a background of earlier religious socialization and involvement in adolescence might lead the youth to eventually reject marijuana use out of guilt or identity dissonance. That is, religious involvement in earlier adolescence, especially more extensive involvement, might lay a foundation of moral beliefs and moral narratives, which could create a moral identity that is influential over the long term (see Smith 2003). Even if a youth experiments with marijuana or uses it for a time (e.g., because of peer pressure, strain, or rebellion), the youth’s earlier religious experience and background might form a foundational standpoint from which the youth will eventually reject marijuana use and desist. We know of only three studies that explicitly focus on religiosity and desistence, and our analysis extends the contributions of both studies in important ways. First, Chu (2007) found that frequency of church attendance was associated with desistance from marijuana and other drug use, and religious salience was negatively related to the onset of drug use, in analyses of Waves V to VII of the National Youth Survey. Like most studies, however, her study utilized limited measures of religiosity, with single items measuring religious behavior (church attendance) and religious salience (perceived importance of religion). In addition, Chu’s analysis included few controls for other theoretically important predictors of delinquency and desistance, such as conventional social bonding, peer influence, self-control, and strain. Second, Giordano and colleagues (2008) examined the effects of religiosity, measured by spirituality (i.e., perceived closeness to God) and church attendance, on desistance using quantitative and qualitative interview data from a sample of socioeconomically disadvantaged offenders. Their quantitative analysis showed no significant effect of either measure of religiosity on the likelihood of sustained desistance. However, their qualitative data did point to several possibilities, as well as limitations, in religion’s role in fostering desistance from crime. Specifically, their interviews showed that spirituality, that is, the offender’s spiritual or religious experiences, were a potential ―hook‖ for a life course change away from crime in the following ways: (1) Spirituality was structurally and subjectively available as a source of ―prosocial capital,‖ (2) spirituality was Ulmer, Desmond, Jang, and Johnson: Teenage Religiosity and Later Marijuana Use 5 associated with positive emotions and a resource for coping with negative emotions, and (3) religion potentially fostered or strengthened ties to prosocial others. However, spirituality, by itself, was often unable to overcome or offset the other criminogenic factors in these offenders’ highly disadvantaged and devianceridden environments. As in other studies, the data that Giordano and colleagues (2008) used limited them to including only church attendance and self-perceived spirituality, or ―closeness to God,‖ as measures of religiosity. Third, Schroeder and Frana (2009), using qualitative interview data, investigated ways in which men in a halfway house used religion as an emotional coping mechanism in their attempts to desist from substance abuse and other deviance. They found that the men used religion as a form of emotional comfort, a distraction from stress, and a marker of personal change. THE PRESENT STUDY This study extends research on religiosity and delinquency, focusing on marijuana use because comparatively little research has addressed the effects of religiosity on changes in substance use across developmental stages, especially during the transition from adolescence to young adulthood. Defining religiosity as an individual’s involvement in religion (i.e., religious involvement) to be measured by subjective religiousness as well as religious practice and participation, we examine whether religiosity explains longitudinal patterns of marijuana use. Specifically, we focus on changes in self-reported marijuana use versus nonuse at different time points in adolescence and young adulthood. As we detail below, we employed three waves of the Add Health data, the first two collected in adolescence and the third in young adulthood. If we control for variables from social learning, conventional social bonding, self-control, and strain,