Suchergebnisse

Der Rückgang der christlichen Religiosität in Europa ist vielfach empirisch belegt. Umstritten ist jedoch, ob es sich um einen Rückgang des Glaubens handelt oder ob Religion einen Formwandel erfährt. Pascal Siegers untersucht auf Basis von Daten der Europäischen Wertestudie die Verbreitung spiritueller Glaubensformen in Europa. Seine Analysen machen deutlich, dass alternative Spiritualitäten zur größten religiösen Minderheit geworden sind. Dabei zeigt sich, dass Menschen dann einen spirituellen Glauben wählen, wenn ein Konflikt zwischen Selbstverwirklichungswerten und der Moral der Kirchen vorliegt.

Abstract
Spirituality is a contentious concept in the social sciences. This is above all due to the increasing number of different definitions of spirituality that are used in the field. Some scholars argue that given this heterogeneity, spirituality is not an analytic concept. Scholars use the concept to denote forms of belief that are not part of conventional religiosity. Therefore, spirituality refers to transformations of religion in modern societies. This paper shows that spirituality is generally defined in relation to religion or religiosity. Thus, different concepts of spirituality can be distinguished according to the way they draw the boundaries between religiosity and spirituality. This approach reveals the most important communalities and differences of different perspectives on spirituality as a scientific concept which allows a better assessment of empirical results from research on spirituality.

Comparing frequency of belief in reincarnation from different international survey projects (RAMP, EVS, ISSP) reveals differences of about 15 to 20 percent depending on the specific question format. If single binary questions are used, then belief in reincarnation is more often reported than if a forced-choice question is used which offers respondents alternatives to belief in reincarnation (e.g. resurrection). One possible explanation for this result is that respondents confuse reincarnation and resurrection if a binary item is used. If this is true, then empirical studies on religious individualization would be flawed because they use belief in reincarnation as an indicator for holistic beliefs such as New Age spirituality, post-Christian spirituality and subjective life spirituality.
Using a two stage question on beliefs about the afterlife that combines a binary rating procedure (1. stage) with a reduced forced-choice design (2. stage) allows analysis of whether respondents systematically confuse reincarnation and resurrection. Moreover, analysing associations with other variables on religious beliefs allows testing if consistent patterns of belief emerge.
The data provide little evidence that respondents confuse resurrection and reincarnation. Rather, they reveal a high level of uncertainty about belief in the afterlife. To conclude, the paper suggests some recommendations on how belief in reincarnation should be used as an indicator for holistic beliefs.

Medical treatments at the beginning and end of human life are highly contested in public discourse. Our study reveals factors shaping the acceptance of social egg freezing (or oocyte cryopreservation) as an assisted reproduction technology (ART) in the general public. Based on the theory of moral contextualism and the literature on medical ethics, we deduce potential factors influencing attitudes toward cryopreservation (for example, the number of oocytes used or the age up to which women plan to use the oocytes). The influence of these factors on individual attitudes is modeled using a factorial design embedded into a web survey. The results show that factors associated with potential harm to the children decrease acceptance of cryopreservation, whereas factors associated with potential harm to the women increase acceptance. The strongest effect has the age at which women plan to use the preserved oocytes.

"Two value concepts are dominant in the social sciences: (1) Schwartz's theory of basic human values, measured through the Portrait Values Questionnaire (ESS) and (2) Inglehart's postmaterialism and Welzel's extension to the self-expression values scale (WVS/ EVS). To advance research in values, two questions need to be addressed: (1) Are the concepts and measurements of values in the different approaches interchangeable? (2) Which of the concepts performs better for explaining moral and social attitudes? This study contributes to the discussion on value concepts by comparing these value instruments using individual level data from an online access panel (n=762) and assessing the performance of values instruments for microexplanations of moral (end-of-life attitudes and sexual morality) and social attitudes (xenophobia). Overall, the measurement model of basic human values with the PVQ provides a sound basis for comparing the Schwartz values to postmaterialism and self-expression values. In both cases, there are positive correlations with universalism and self-direction and negative correlations with tradition/ conformity and security, which do not exceed 0.4. Regarding the performance, it turns out that the Schwartz values are in toto a more powerful tool than both Inglehart's postmaterialism and Welzel's self-expression values, in terms of explained variance as well as in terms of standardized effects." (author's abstract)

This dataset contains the results of a multiple group latent class analysis of religious orientations in Europe. The model was designed to distinguish between conventional religiosity, holistic spirituality and non-religiosity. The measurement model was developed for data from the fourth wave of the European Values Study 2008/2010.
Six different classes of religious orientations were distinguished: (1) atheism, (2) religious indifference, (3) holistic spirituality, (4) moderate religiosity, (5) individualistic religiosity, and (6) church religiosity. The data file contains (1) the respondent ID for merging with data from EVS 2008/2010, the posterior probabilities estimated in the model for each respondent and each latent class, and the assigned classes based on the highest posterior probabilities.