Sectarianism is perceived as a serious issue in Scotland despite a lack of concrete evidence, according to the Advisory Group on Tackling Sectarianism. This paper addresses one of the gaps in knowledge, the attitudes of Catholic school pupils. Our research was designed to profile sectarian attitudes among a sample of Catholic school pupils in…

This study set out to explore levels of religious affect (measured by the Francis Scale of Attitude toward Christianity) and personal affect (measured by the Oxford Happiness Questionnaire) among samples of Catholic students in the Republic of Ireland attending fifth- and sixth-year classes (N = 3015) and Catholic students in Northern Ireland…

Drawing on data from the 2011 Australian National Church Life Survey, this study was designed to assess the connection between religious affect (as a measure of Christian commitment) and global happiness (as a measure of personal well being) among a sample of 6,194 young churchgoers in Australia between the ages of 8 and 14 years, attending a…

Northern Ireland has been and remains a religiously divided community. This study sets out to examine outgroup prejudice among a sample of 1799 13-15-year-old students attending Catholic or Protestant schools and employs both bivariate analyses and hierarchical modelling to chart the associations between outgroup prejudice and personal factors…

Recognition that the United Kingdom has increasingly become a multi-cultural and multi-faith society has raised questions about the place of church schools or schools with a religious character within the state-maintained sector. The issue was given particular focus by the Runnymede Trusts report "Right to divide? Faith schools and community…

The present study begins by distinguishing between three kinds of "faith schools" (known as schools with a religious character) within England and Wales: faith schools that operate within the state-maintained sector and had their origin in voluntary church-related initiatives prior to the Education Act 1870; "traditional"…

This study draws together two research traditions: John Greer's pioneering research among pupils in Protestant and Catholic schools in Northern Ireland and Leslie J. Francis's research concerning teenage religion and values in England and Wales. A sample of 1,585 13- to 15-year-old male pupils attending Catholic schools (n = 712) and Protestant…

The present study has built on three earlier studies reported by Francis and Burton (1994), Francis and Evans (1996), and Francis (2005) to test the hypothesis that there is a positive correlation between frequency of prayer and perceived purpose in life among 13-to 15-year-old young people who are within a community with high levels of church…