Religious and Non-Religious Coping:

Religious behaviors are commonly used by older persons to cope with stressful life-events and situations. In the present study, adaptation and coping were examined in a stratified random sample of 100 persons age 55 to 80 participating in the Second Duke Longitudinal Study of Aging. Twelve established social psychological measures of adaptation and coping were utilized for this purpose. Mean scores were compared between persons using religious behaviros and those using other coping behaviors. Social class, amount of life-stress experienced, and type of stressors were also compared between religious and non-religious copers. No significant difference was observed between religious and non-religious copers on any of the 12 measures of coping and adaptation. Stratifying the sample by sex did not alter these results. A small proportion of the sample (7%) were distinguished by the degree to which religon had permeated their coping behaviors and outlook on life. Despite being of lower social class and experiencing more stressful life-events, this group achieved the highest coping scores on 9 of 12 coping measures. These results suggest that while in general there appears to be little difference in successful coping between religous and non-religious copers, for older persons of lower social class who experience high levels of stress, religious behaviors - when integrated into one's view of life and used frequently to deal with stressful situations-may be associated with high levels of adaptation and coping.