THE SUBJECTIVE IMPORTANCE OF BEING RELIGIOUS AND ITS EFFECT ON HEALTHAND MORALE 14 YEARS LATER

Longitudinal data were used to examine whether the subjective importan ce attached to being a religious person influenced health or psycholog ical well-being 14 years later. About two-thirds of the panel reported consistently positive attitudes tow ard being religious throughout th e study; about 16 percent were consistently negative in terms of the i mportance of being religious. In regression analyses, 1977 rating of t he importance of being religious had no predictive value in understand ing variation in health or psychological well-being in 1991. Religious affiliation and frequency of amending religious functions were also u nrelated to health or psychological well-being. These results call int o question conclusions of earlier reviews of the literature.