Item Detail
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10961
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1
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0
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English
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Religious Heritage and Premarital Sex : Evidence from a National Sample of Young Adults
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Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion
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Summer 1991
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30
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Hoboken, NJ
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Wiley ; Society for the Scientific Study of Religion
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173-80
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About 2,000 youth who were between 14 and 22 years of age in 1979 when the survey was begun, have been re-interviewed annually in the National Longitudinal Surveys of Youth. This study used information from the 1979 and 1983 interviews to assess the possible effects of specific religious heritage on premarital sexual behavior. The expectation was that those young adults who grew up in more conservative Christian churches would be less likely than Mainline Protestants or Catholics to engage in pre-marital sex. Furthermore, they hypothesized that sect-like groups would exhibit lower probabilities of pre-marital sex. The study results revealed that white females and males who listed membership in the institutionalized sect category (primarily Pentecostals, Mormons, and Jehovah's Witnesses) produced the lowest likelihoods of pre-marital sex.