High levels of church attendance in the ninth grade may protect teenagers from getting involved in risky behaviors throughout the rest of their high school careers, a new study suggests.
Researchers from The Ohio State University talked with with approximately 700 black teenagers every year for four years and found that more religious activity in the ninth grade led to smaller increases in marijuana use among boys and cigarette use among girls.
The study also found that, during high school, larger decreases in religious activity, such as attending church services, were significantly associated with greater increases in alcohol use among boys and sexual intercourse among girls.
"Sex and alcohol use are often emphatically forbidden by denominations common to African-American communities," said Kenneth Steinman, the study's lead author.
He said that while it was no surprise that more religious activity often corresponded to less risky activity, the study also discovered that the level of church participation predicted involvement in risk behavior, and not vice versa.
During yearly interviews, the Flint, Mich., students answered questions about their church attendance as well as if and how often they had had sex or used alcohol during the previous month, and if or how often they had used marijuana or smoked cigarettes during the previous year.
Steinman noted that, overall, between ninth and 12th grades, weekly church attendance decreased from 46 to 33 percent in this group while involvement in risky behavior increased.
Girls who stayed active in church were less likely to have sex, while boys were less likely to drink alcohol.
Yet for some risky behaviors, religious activity may have a lasting effect, even among teens who do not stay active. Regardless of their later participation, girls who were religiously active in the ninth grade smoked fewer cigarettes throughout high school, while boys used less marijuana.
"These gender differences suggest that a church's efforts to keep teens connected with religious activity may have different effects on boys and girls, as well as on different risk behaviors," Steinman said.
This research was funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse and appears in a recent issue of the American Journal of Community Psychology.