God, Love, and Health: Findings from a Clinical Study
This study identifies a significant health effect of a loving relationship with God. Based on work by Sorokin, an eight-item scale was developed and validated to assess what he termed "religious love:" the feeling of loving and being loved by God. Using a sample of 205 family practice outp...
| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Springer
2001
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| In: |
Review of religious research
Year: 2001, Volume: 42, Issue: 3, Pages: 277-293 |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Summary: | This study identifies a significant health effect of a loving relationship with God. Based on work by Sorokin, an eight-item scale was developed and validated to assess what he termed "religious love:" the feeling of loving and being loved by God. Using a sample of 205 family practice outpatients, hierarchical OLS regression was used to investigate the effect of this construct on a standard self-rating of health. Several sets of factors were hypothesized to mediate the relationship between religious love and self-rated health: religious involvement, social resources, psychological resources, objective health status, and sociodemographic factors. These effects were controlled for in six successive models. In the end, despite controlling for effects of 15 variables and scales that accounted for nearly 40% of the variance in self-rated health, the statistically significant association between religious love and self-rated health at baseline (β = .33, p < .001) remained strong, significant, and only marginally affected (β = .24, p < .05). These findings provide evidence that loving and being loved by God exerts a positive influence on perceptions of health. |
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| ISSN: | 2211-4866 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Review of religious research
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.2307/3512570 |