Collaborative Research: Religious Involvement and Mortality in the U.S.

集体研究SES-0243189 SES-0243249罗伯特·悍马理查德·罗杰斯克里斯托弗·埃里森·杰森·博德曼德克萨斯大学奥斯汀分校科罗拉多大学博尔德宗教在美国仍然是一个充满活力的文化和机构存在。鉴于宗教对美国社会的强大和持续的重要性，了解宗教参与是否像最近的一些研究发现的那样与死亡风险有关，如果是的话，确定这种关系的规模和机制就显得尤为重要。关于这一主题的重大新作得到了广泛的宣传，并在社会科学和医学文献中产生了重大影响。然而，这一领域的研究仍然存在很大的争议，理论和方法都不发达，缺乏深度。通过完成对一些现有数据集的二次分析，这项研究将解决宗教死亡文献中其他一些目前存在的局限性。具体地说，它将解决选择性是否对死亡率和宗教之间的联系负责的问题。有许多因素可能会影响宗教参与和死亡率，这可以解释这种统计关联。然而，这可能是科学界需要解决的关键问题，以便理解宗教与死亡的关系是被认为是因果关系还是虚假关系。其次，只有非常有限的研究考虑了宗教参与对人口亚群中死亡率的不同影响。这种对当代美国多样化人口格局的忽视可能导致经验发现，尽管这些发现在整个人口中可能是正确的，但掩盖了人口内部的巨大异质性。第三，对受宗教影响的具体死因只给予很少的关注。第四，直到最近才有几个以人口为基础的数据来源，可以在国家一级调查宗教参与与死亡率之间的联系。因此，与社会学死亡文献中核心的其他社会和人口因素(例如，社会经济地位、种族/民族、性别、年龄、婚姻状况)以及对美国健康和长寿的理解至关重要的其他社会和人口因素相比，关于宗教对健康和死亡的影响的知识显然是有限的。在医学文献中，关于医学院是否应该教授宗教与健康的课程，以及医生是否应该将宗教健康-死亡文献作为指导他们与患者建立关系的指南之一，存在着一场激烈的辩论。然而，到目前为止的证据还太过试探性，不能得出宗教参与促进健康的结论，尽管很明显，最近的人似乎倾向于这样做。但在选择性问题得到充分解决之前，关于整体关系的不可靠的问题仍将存在。除了总体关系之外，受影响的特定社会和人口群体，以及宗教可能影响健康和死亡率的具体机制，现在才刚刚开始被利用。因此，该项目有可能阐明引起公众高度关注的社会学问题，以及社会科学和医学界的关注。此外，在社会学内部，从医学社会学到人口学再到宗教社会学，这一主题引起了极大的兴趣，来自这些领域的教职员工和学生都参与了研究，并对研究结果感兴趣。其次，该项目将进一步促进德克萨斯大学和科罗拉多大学之间的长期和富有成效的伙伴关系。

Collborative Research SES- 0243189 SES-0243249 Robert Hummer Richard Rogers Christopher Ellison Jason Boardman University of Texas at Austin University of Colorado at BoulderReligion remains a vibrant cultural and institutional presence in the US. With the strong and continuing importance of religion to American society, it is particularly important to understand whether religious involvement is related to mortality risks as some recent research finds and, if so, to determine the magnitude and mechanisms that characterize this relationship. Major new work on the topic has been widely publicized and has made a major impact in both the social science and medical literatures. Nevertheless, this area of research remains highly controversial, theoretically and methodologically underdeveloped, and lacking in depth. Through completing secondary analyses of a number of existing datasets this research will tackle a number of other current limitations that characterize the religion-mortality literature. Specifically, it will address the issue of whether selectivity is responsible for the association between mortality and religion. There are a number of factors that may influence both religious involvement and mortality that can account for this statistical association. However, this is perhaps the key question that needs to be addressed by the scientific community in order to understand whether the religion-mortality relationship may be considered causal or spurious. Second, only very limited research has considered the differential effects of religious involvement on mortality within subgroups of the population. This inattention to the diverse demographic landscape of the contemporary US can lead to empirical findings that, while potentially true among the whole population, mask substantial heterogeneity within the population. Third, only scant attention has been given to the specific causes of death that are influenced by religious involvement. Fourth, only recently have several population-based data sources become available that allow inquiry into the association between religious involvement and mortality at the national level. Thus, compared to other social and demographic factors that are central in the sociological mortality literature (e.g., SES, race/ethnicity, gender, age, marital status) and critical to the understanding of health and longevity in the United States, knowledge regarding religious influences on health and mortality is clearly limited. There is a major debate in the medical literature about whether medical schools should teach courses on religion and health and about whether physicians should or should not use the religion health-mortality literature as one of the guides toward informing their relationships with patients. However, the evidence to date is far too tentative to conclude that religious involvement promotes health, although it is clear that the recent seems to be leaning that way. But until the issues of selectivity are fully addressed, questions regarding the spuriousness of the overall relationship will remain. Beyond the overall relationship, the specific social and demographic groups that are influenced, and the specific mechanisms by which religion may influence health and mortality, are just now beginning to be tapped. Thus, this project has the potential to shed light on sociological issues that have captured substantial public attention, as well as the attention of both the social scientific and medical communities. Further, within sociology, there is substantial interest in this subject matter ranging from medical sociology to demography to the sociology of religion, with faculty members and students from each of these areas involved in the research and interested in the findings. Second, the project will further contribute to the long-standing and very productive partnership between the Universities of Texas and Colorado.