Resumen de Religious self-definition, mass attendance, importance of God, and hopelessness among spanish undergraduates

Joaquín García Alandete, Eva Rosa Martínez, José Francisco Gallego Pérez

• español

  El objetivo de este trabajo es analizar la relación entre la autodefinición religiosa, la asistencia a Misa, la importancia de Dios y la desesperanza. La hipótesis afirma que las variables religiosas y la desesperanza están negativamente relacionadas. Participan 273 estudiantes universitarios españoles reclutados incidentalmente, los cuales cumplimentan tres ítems religiosos y una versión española de la Escala de Desesperanza. Se utilizan los estadísticos Chi-Cuadrado y Bonferroni. Los resultados indican que los distintos grupos de autodefinición religiosa y de asistencia a Misa no se relacionan con diferencias significativas en desesperanza, mientras que en la variable importancia de Dios sí existen diferencias entre grupos, diferencias que no se ajustan a lo hallado en estudios anteriores. Se observan las limitaciones del estudio, se ofrecen sugerencias para futuras investigaciones y la necesidad de distinguir entre los distintos aspectos de la religiosidad, con el fin de precisar mejor sus implicaciones sobre la desesperanza.

• English

  The aim of this work was to examine the relationship between religious self-definition, attending Mass, the importance of God, and hopelessness under the hy-pothesis that these religious variables and hopelessness are negatively related. The par-ticipants were 273 Spanish undergraduates who were incidentally recruited. and who completed three religious items and the Spanish version of a Hopelessness Scale. The Chi-squared test and Bonferroni test were used in the statistical analysis. The results indicate that there were no statistically significant differences between the religious self-definition and attending Mass groups in relation to hopelessness, whereas there were differences between groups in the variable importance of God; this is not consis-tent with the findings of previous studies. We discuss the limitations of the study, offer suggestions for future research, and indicate the need to distinguish between the diverse aspects of religiosity to better explain their implications regarding hopelessness.