Children's understanding of religion: Interviews with Arab-Muslim, Asian-Muslim, Christian and Hindu children aged 5-11 years

Rachel A. Takriti, Martyn Barrett, Eithne Buchanan-Barrow

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

10 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Research into children's awareness of group differences has been an active area of research for some time, with work focusing on areas such as nationality, ethnicity, gender and religion. The majority of the work in these areas has taken the cognitive-constructivist framework as a background, offering a domain-general approach to all social cognition. This paper reports a qualitative study investigating children's understanding of religion and the importance of religion, broadly following an interview schedule based on Verbit's (1970) definition of religion. A semi-structured interview procedure was used with 58 Arab Muslim, Asian Muslim, Christian, and Hindu children aged between 5 and 11 years living in North London. Religion appeared to be highly salient to the children interviewed, and findings suggested that children's religious identity is subject to a complex pattern of influences which cannot be solely explained by either age or cognitive differences.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)29-42
Number of pages14
JournalMental Health, Religion and Culture
Volume9
Issue number1
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Mar 2006
Externally publishedYes

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Clinical Psychology
  • Psychiatry and Mental health

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