Young People's Attitudes to Religious Diversity

The increasing religious diversity throughout the United Kingdom provides both a major challenge and an opportunity for the future of society. The media commenting on recent local and international events and trends have given religious difference and divisions a high public profile. There is a growing recognition at government level that religion cannot be relegated to the private sphere and that teaching school students about religious diversity in religious education and citizenship lessons can contribute to community cohesion. To date little research has been done on students' own attitudes towards religious diversity or the factors influencing their formation. These attitudes and influences are the subject of this research project to be carried out by members of the Warwick Religions and Education Research Unit (WRERU).

The research will investigate the attitudes of 13 to 16 year old students across the United Kingdom. Young people from a variety of socio-economic, cultural, ethnic and religious backgrounds will take part in the study in order for a variety of views to be heard and the influence of a number of contextual factors to be considered. The WRERU team will use mixed methods (qualitative and quantitative) to explore the young people's experiences of and perspectives on religious diversity.

The first phase of the project will take place in fifteen secondary schools. These will be selected to cover a variety of contexts of diversity and relative homogeneity across the four nations and London (three schools in each). London is included as a special case because of its sheer size and distinctive patterns of diversity. Qualitative researchers from WRERU will conduct three group interviews in each school to investigate the key themes and issues the students identify with religious diversity and the range and variety of positions they adopt in response. This phase will provide an exploratory basis and a detailed context for the quantitative phase. It will allow hypotheses to emerge that will then be tested in the next phase by a UK wide survey.

The quantitative survey will draw a representative sample of 10,000 pupils from state maintained, independent and faith-based schools. A sample of this size will ensure reliable visibility for minorities. Established psychometric instruments and specially originated scales will be employed and creative use made of various statistical techniques to facilitate the development and testing of path models to investigate the influence on student attitudes of social and contextual factors (including school, family, media and local neighbourhood), of their own religious affiliation, beliefs and practices and views of transcendence, of personality traits and other individual-level variables.

Colleagues with qualitative and quantitative research experience will work closely together in the design of the project, analysis of the data and write up of the findings to enable a cross-fertilisation of ideas and expertise. The triangulation of methods will enable a depth of analysis and a degree of generalisability that would not have been possible on the basis of one methodological approach alone.

A major outcome of the project will be enhanced research capacity and excellence within quantitative and qualitative approaches to empirical research in religion among young people. This research will be of major interest to government departments concerned with the role of religion in shaping society; to inter-governmental organisations such as the Council of Europe, to churches and faith communities concerned both with internal development and with assessing their impact on society; to head teachers and governors, to RE and Citizenship teachers and professional organisations concerned with curriculum development related to the needs and perspectives of young people.