The purpose of this study is to examine the effect of the spiritual maturity and religious orientation on psychological well-being of several factors and promote understanding of developing them through the religious activities of youth.
The researc...
The purpose of this study is to examine the effect of the spiritual maturity and religious orientation on psychological well-being of several factors and promote understanding of developing them through the religious activities of youth.
The research questions of the study were as follows:
1. How are the spiritual maturity and religious orientation, depending on social demographic variables such as sex, grade, baptism period, the motive of baptism, the attendance frequency of Sunday-school, domestic economic standard?
2. What relationship do the spiritual maturity, religious orientation, and psychological well-being have?
3. What effect will the spiritual maturity including religious well-being and existential well-being and religious orientation like intrinsic religious orientation and extrinsic religious orientation have on youth’s psychological well-being such as positive self-perception, family relationship, teacher relationship, friendship, self-assertion, self directed learning capability?
In order to answer the questions above, survey was conducted by random sampling for 330 youth who participate in Sunday School of 330 Middle and high school youth in 5 districts in Seoul at 6 Cathedrals of the Catholic faith and received baptism. The tools used to measure the effect of the spiritual maturity and religious orientation on youth’s psychological well-being are spiritual well-being scale, religious orientation scale, and youth psychological well-being scale. As for analysing data, the t-test and ANOVA, Pearson correlation, multiple regression analysis were taken effect by using SPSS / PC Windows 19.0.
The results of this study were as follows:
First, as a result of analysing the influence of the spiritual maturity and religious orientation on youth’s psychological well-being by using t-test and ANOVA analysis, there was a statistically noticeable difference between female and male students for the sub factors of the spiritual maturity, which are religious well-being and existential well-being and those of the religious orientation, which is extrinsic orientation. Especially, female students had higher figure than male students. As for grades, the spiritual maturity and religious
orientation of high school students were higher than middle school students, but there was few remarkable difference between them. As a result of proving cross analysis process and average value difference between sex and grade, there was a statistically noticeable difference between female and male students for religious well-being and existential well-being and extrinsic orientation in the middle school students group. Female students had higher figure than male students. In the high school students group, the intrinsic orientation of female students were higher than male students. Meanwhile, as a result of evaluating the average value difference between middle school students and high school students, male students had higher religious well-being, existential well-being, extrinsic orientation than middle school students in contrast that female students did not have noticeable difference between grades in any variables. As for religious orientation, there was no difference between middle school students and high school students, but male students had higher extrinsic orientation in the high school and lower intrinsic orientation in the middle school. About the difference due to baptism period, a group consisted of students who have been more than 5 years since they were baptized had noticeably higher existential well-being and extrinsic orientation another group consist of students who have been less than 5 years. When it comes to the difference of the motive of baptism, a group consisted of students who were recommended by their friends had higher existential well-being and another group consisted of students who were motivated by themselves had higher intrinsic orientation. On the other hand, the higher participation rate in Sunday schools, the higher existential well-being and religious orientation. The higher domestic economic standard, the higher spiritual maturity, but there was no noticable difference in religious orientation.
Second, as a result of a corelation analysis so as to figure out the relationship between the spiritual maturity and religious orientation and psychological well-being of Catholic youth, there was a statistically noticeable difference between all of sub-variables. As for spiritual maturity and religious orientation, extrinsic orientation is closely related to spiritual maturity and is not to intrinsic orientation. Spiritual maturity and psychological well-being is highly related to religious well-being, family relationship, teacher relationship, friendship, self-assertion, self directed learning capability. Regarding religious orientation and psychological well-being, there was Interrelationship between extrinsic orientation and family relationship, teacher relationship, friendship, self-assertion, self directed learning capability. Additionally, there was corelation between intrinsic orientation and positive self-perception.
Third, according to multiple regression analysis in order to find out the effect of spiritual maturity and religious orientation on the psychological well-being of Catholic youth, it is proved that both of spiritual maturity and religious orientation are main variable which influence on psychological well-being. Religious orientation influenced on amily relationship, friendship, self-assertion and intrinsic orientation did on self-perception and teacher relationship.
To sum up, the higher spiritual maturity, the bigger positive effect on the psychological well-being on youth and intrinsic and extrinsic religious orientation have on complementary impact on the psychological well-being of youth. Therefore, this study may help to understand that students’ spiritual maturity and extrinsic, intrinsic orientation of religion can influence on psychological well-being when counseling and appropriately support individual students by utilizing the information of this paper.