Religion and the Decision to Use Contraception in India

This article investigates two hypotheses put forward to explain the effect of religion on the decision to use contraception in India. The first hypothesis is the "pure religion effect," that the intellectual content of religion influences contraceptive behavior. This hypothesis is explored by examining women's views on the theological content of Islam and Hinduism in relation to birth control, provided by a sample of 186 rural Hindu and Muslim women from southern India. The second hypothesis examined is the "characteristics" hypothesis, that religious differences in contraceptive adoption are explained by socioeconomic characteristics of religious groups. This is tested by a logit model that shows that there is no statistically significant difference between Hindus and Muslims in the effect of religion on contraceptive adoption, after controlling for socioeconomic characteristics. Taken together, the qualitative and quantitative findings have significant implications for religious groups and for population policies in India.     

Buddhist Teen Worldview: Some Normative Background for Health Professionals

Although there are dangers in essentializing religious practice, to be able to typify the worldviews of healthy Buddhists becomes advantageous when health professionals need to recognize atypical worldviews that are potentially pathological. The paper is an anthology of potentially ambiguous claims expressed by healthy Buddhist teenagers during UK research including outlook on karma, rebirth, meditation, mindfulness, contact with spirit presences, renunciation, spiritual teachers and superstition. The testimony helps clarify diagnosis of identity, well-being and conformity issues, social withdrawal, anxiety and psychotic disorders in Buddhist teens while offering advice on management of ADHD, OCD, substance abuse and depression. While offering normalized background against which health professionals can evaluate spiritual well-being of young Buddhists the paper offers advice for how treatment can be made more culturally sensitive for Buddhists.     

Creating Lesbian,Gay, Bisexual,and Transgender Allies: Testing a Model of Privilege Investment

Participants were assigned to 1 of 4 lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender ally‐development conditions; then, they completed measures of prejudice and propensity for social justice behavior. A structural equation model uncovered that propensity for social justice behavior was negatively related to prejudice and positively related to the emotional impact of experiences with discrimination in other domains of identity. Women, people of color, and individuals of lower social classes had the highest propensity for social justice behavior and the lowest prejudice.