A many-analysts approach to the relation between religiosity and well-being

The relation between religiosity and well-being is one of the most researched topics in the psychology of religion, yet the directionality and robustness of the effect remains debated. Here, we adopted a many-analysts approach to assess the robustness of this relation based on a new cross-cultural d...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Hoogeveen, S, Sarafoglou, A, Aczel, B, Aditya, Y, Alayan, AJ, Allen, PJ, Altay, S, Alzahawi, S, Amir, Y, Anthony, F-V, Appiah, OK, Atkinson, QD, Baimel, A, Balkaya-Ince, M, Balsamo, M, Banker, S, Bartos, F, Becerra, M, Beffara, B, Beitner, J, Bendixen, T, Berkessel, JB, Berniunas, R, Billet, MI, Billingsley, J, Bortolini, T, Breitsohl, H, Bret, A, Brown, FL, Brown, J, Brumbaugh, CC, Buczny, J, Bulbulia, J, Caballero, S, Carlucci, L, Carmichael, CL, Cattaneo, MEGV, Charles, SJ, Claessens, S, Panagopoulos, MC, Costa, AB, Crone, DL, Czoschke, S, Czymara, C, D'Urso, ED, Dahlstrom, O, Dalla Rosa, A, Danielsson, H, De Ron, J, de Vries, YA, Levy, N
Format: Journal article
Language:English
Published: Taylor and Francis 2022
Description
Summary:The relation between religiosity and well-being is one of the most researched topics in the psychology of religion, yet the directionality and robustness of the effect remains debated. Here, we adopted a many-analysts approach to assess the robustness of this relation based on a new cross-cultural dataset (N=10,535 participants from 24 countries). We recruited 120 analysis teams to investigate (1) whether religious people self-report higher well-being, and (2) whether the relation between religiosity and self-reported well-being depends on perceived cultural norms of religion (i.e., whether it is considered normal and desirable to be religious in a given country). In a two-stage procedure, the teams first created an analysis plan and then executed their planned analysis on the data. For the first research question, all but 3 teams reported positive effect sizes with credible/confidence intervals excluding zero (median reported β=0.120). For the second research question, this was the case for 65% of the teams (median reported β=0.039). While most teams applied (multilevel) linear regression models, there was considerable variability in the choice of items used to construct the independent variables, the dependent variable, and the included covariates.