Toward an Understanding of How Religion Affects the Timing of Sexual Debuts: A Test of Smith's Framework

This study uses a portion of Smith's (2003) framework on how religious participation impacts teen outcomes to examine religious participation's relationship to the timing of adolescents' first sexual intercourse. Smith (2003) proposes that religious participation creates its impact primarily through nine intervening religious mechanisms or factors. Two sets of models are considered using data from Wave I of the National Study of Youth and Religion. The first set considers how religious participation relates to the presence of three of Smith's (2003) factors, and the second looks at how these factors the timing of adolescents' coital debuts. The religious participation measures, especially co-participation of teens and their parents, increase the levels of the factors that are directly related to forestalling sexual debuts. The direct effects of religious participation on the age at sexual debut become statistically insignificant in the presence of Smith's (2003) factors, supporting the idea that considering only religion's direct effects is a myopic view of how religion work.