Spiritual Enlightenment Important to UCLA Students

Key findings in UCLA study

Researchers at The Higher Education Research Institute at UCLA surveyed 14,527 students attending 136 colleges and universities nationwide, first as entering freshmen in the fall of 2004 and again in the late spring of 2007 at the end of their junior year.

Their study, "Spirituality in Higher Education: Students' Search for Meaning and Purpose," examined data from those surveys and found:

The percentage of students who considered "seeking beauty in my life" as very important or essential rose from 53.7 percent in freshman year to 66.3 percent in junior year.

The percentage of students who considered "becoming a more loving person" as very important or essential rose rom 67.4 percent in freshman year to 82.8 percent in junior year.

The percentage of students who considered "developing a meaningful philosophy of life" to be very important or essential rose from 41.4 percent in freshman year to 55.4 percent in junior year.

While 62.1 percent of entering freshmen rated "helping others in difficulty" as very important or essential, 74.3 percent of the students believed that three years later.

"Reducing pain and suffering in the world" was endorsed by 54.6 percent of students in 2004, compared to 66.6 percent in 2007.



Key findings in Notre Dame study

The National Study of Youth and Religion conducted telephone surveys of 3,290 youths ages 13 to 17 and followed up with personal interviews and phone surveys of most of the respondents in 2005 and again in 2007 and 2008, when the respondents were 18 to 23.

The results are published in the book Souls in Transition: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of Emerging Adults ," by Christian Smith (with Patricia Snell) of Notre Dame University, published this year by Oxford University Press.

The percentage of respondents who consider themselves "nonreligious" almost
doubled in size to 24 percent over the five-year span.

Few non-LDS teens converted to the Mormon faith by the time they were 18 to 23, and the few who converted came from the Jewish and nonreligious groups.

In the five-year span, half or more of all respondents in every major religious tradition stayed in their "baseline" tradition.

More than 77 percent of emerging adults say they believe in God, 16.1 percent are unsure and 6 percent say they do not. As teens, more than 84 percent believed in God.

About 44 percent of the emerging adults say that religious faith is very or extremely important in their lives, while less than 27 percent say it is not very important or not important at all.
http://www.sltrib.com/faith/ci_13411196