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

综合研究SES- 0243189 SES-0243249 Robert Hummer 理查德·罗杰斯·克里斯托弗·埃里森 德克萨斯大学奥斯汀分校 科罗拉多大学博尔德分校仍然是美国充满活力的文化和机构。随着宗教对美国社会的强大和持续的重要性，特别重要的是要了解宗教参与是否与死亡风险有关，因为最近的一些研究发现，如果是这样，以确定这种关系的程度和机制。关于这一主题的主要新工作得到了广泛宣传，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，理论和方法欠发达，缺乏深度。 通过完成对一些现有数据集的二次分析，这项研究将解决一些其他目前的局限性，这些局限性是宗教死亡率文献的特征。 具体而言，它将探讨选择性是否是造成死亡率与宗教之间联系的原因。有一些因素可能影响宗教参与和死亡率，可以解释这种统计关联。然而，这也许是科学界需要解决的关键问题，以了解宗教与死亡率的关系是否可以被认为是因果关系或虚假的。第二，只有非常有限的研究考虑了宗教参与对人口亚群内死亡率的不同影响。这种对当代美国多样化的人口景观的忽视可能导致实证研究结果，虽然在整个人口中可能是真实的，但掩盖了人口中的实质性异质性。第三，很少注意到受宗教参与影响的具体死亡原因。第四，直到最近才有几个基于人口的数据来源，可以在国家一级调查宗教参与与死亡率之间的关系。因此，与社会学死亡率文献中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，但有关宗教对健康和死亡率影响的知识显然有限。在医学文献中有一个主要的争论，关于医学院是否应该教授宗教和健康的课程，以及医生是否应该或不应该使用宗教健康-死亡率文献作为指导他们与病人关系的指南之一。 然而，迄今为止的证据太过初步，无法得出宗教参与促进健康的结论，尽管最近的证据似乎倾向于这种方式。但是，在选择性问题得到充分解决之前，有关整个关系的虚假性的问题仍然存在。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刚刚开始被挖掘。因此，该项目有可能揭示社会学问题，这些问题已经引起了大量公众的关注，以及社会科学和医学界的关注。此外，在社会学中，对这一主题的兴趣很大，从医学社会学到人口学再到宗教社会学，每个领域的教师和学生都参与了研究并对研究结果感兴趣。 第二，该项目将进一步促进得克萨斯大学和科罗拉多大学之间的长期和非常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.