Makes Religion Happy or Makes Happiness Religious? An Analysis of a Three-Wave Panel Using and Comparing Discrete and Continuous-Time Techniques

Heiner Meulemann () and Johan H. L. Oud ()
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Heiner Meulemann: University of Cologne, Institute for Sociology and Social Psychology
Johan H. L. Oud: University of Nijmegen, Behavioural Science Institute

Chapter Chapter 7 in Continuous Time Modeling in the Behavioral and Related Sciences, 2018, pp 163-178 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract The reciprocal effects of religiosity and life satisfaction are examined in a three-wave panel study of German former high school students at ages 30, 43 and 56. Religiosity is measured as church attendance and Christian belief such that three measures are followed up over three time points. Analyses by structural equation modelling in discrete time and continuous time are compared. According to both methods, church attendance has the strongest autoregression/auto-effect, followed by Christian worldview, and next by life satisfaction; furthermore, all cross-regressions/cross-effects are slightly negative. The answer to both questions in the title is therefore negative. In contrast to the cross-regressions in the discrete-time analysis, the continuous-time analysis reveals significance of all negative cross-effects and reverses the strength order of the cross-effects between the two dimensions of religiosity. Continuous-time analysis also enables to compute and display the complete autoregression and cross-regression functions as well as the development of means and variances of the three variables across continuous time.

Date: 2018
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DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-77219-6_7

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