The import of the goodness of fit in parent and youth religiosity for youth thriving: A developmental systems analysis

Derived from ideas associated with developmental systems theories, the present study contributes to contemporary work interested in adolescent religious development and youth thriving. The study ascertained the influence on youth thriving of the goodness of fit in religiosity between youth and parents in a random sample of 1,000 parent-child triads drawn from an overall sample of 3,981 parent-youth triads responding to the Search Institute (1984) parent and youth survey, Young Adolescents and Their Parents ( YAP). Using LISREL 8.53 on this sample of 1,000 youth, the present study confirmed a four-factor structure for religiosity and nine-factor structure for thriving identified by Dowling et al. (2003) and extended the religiosity factor solution to each of their parents. Goodness of fit statistics were used to apportion the youth into groups according to level of fit with parents. Both median split and quartile split distributions were assessed. Using multivariate t-tests procedures and multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) procedures to test the prediction that better person-context fit is associated with positive functioning, the scores for the nine thriving factors identified by Dowling et al. (2003) were compared across the fit groups. No significant results were found. Hierarchical multiple regression analyses were employed to test if the higher order interactions were a better predictor of thriving than the lower order factors or main effects. Seventy-eight percent (77.8%) of the overall hierarchical regression analyses were significant. While the majority of the time, child effects alone provided the significant variance to the model, 43% of the time the mother and child or mother, father, and child interactions provided additional significant variance to the overall model. Limitations of the present study and directions for future research with this and related data sets will be discussed.