Religious Self-definition, Mass Attendance, Importance of God, and Hopelessness among Spanish Undergraduates / Autodefinición Religiosa, Asistencia a Misa, Importancia de Dios y Desesperanza en Universitarios Espa oles

The aim of this work was to examine the relationship between religious self-definition, attending Mass, the importance of God, and hopelessness under the hy-pothesis that these religious variables and hopelessness are negatively related. The par-ticipants were 273 Spanish undergraduates who were incidentally recruited. and who completed three religious items and the Spanish version of a Hopelessness Scale. The Chi-squared test and Bonferroni test were used in the statistical analysis. The results indicate that there were no statistically significant differences between the religious self-definition and attending Mass groups in relation to hopelessness, whereas there were differences between groups in the variable importance of God; this is not consis-tent with the findings of previous studies. We discuss the limitations of the study, offer suggestions for future research, and indicate the need to distinguish between the diverse aspects of religiosity to better explain their implications regarding hopelessness.