FALSE or TRUE: Church attendance is good for your health

The correlation between church attendance and good health is a strong relationship. 

Put simply, people who attend church on a regular basis also have better health than do people who do not attend church on a regular basis.

So, what’s my issue? It’s the old problem that never goes away-- correlations do not mean causation. The fact that people who attend church have better health than those who don’t, does not mean attending church caused better health.

The RNS writer, Yonat Shimron, does not emphasize this important fact about correlations. Here’s a quote from the first sentence of the story:

“(RNS) The latest in a long line of studies, now numbering in the hundreds, if not thousands, shows that church attendance is good for your health.”

Later in the article, the author refers to various factors connected with church attendance that might be responsible for the supposed effect. It is good to consider various possibilities like prayer, social interaction, and so forth when trying to understand more about a phenomenon. But, there is no consideration given to the reasons why people who do not attend church may not have better health.

And more importantly, the author, like so many students and professionals, ignore the fact that the research is not an experiment aimed atdetermining cause-effect relationships.

Correlational research is useful. We can learn about relationships, which can lead to exploring additional connections. Some of the reliable relationships may turn out to be cause-effect relationships. The problem with the article, and other news stories derived from this and similar studies, is the lack of attention to the research methods involved.

One useful part of the article is the link to the original publication. I took a look at the original study. Do you see how they defined church goer? In one analysis, a church goer was someone who attended at least once a year. In another analysis, a churchgoer is someone who went at least once a week.

Another issue common to much research, including my own, is the reliance on self-report. When we are talking about health, self-report is a place to start, but we really need biological data before making health claims.

Shimron asks, “Should doctors prescribe church attendance?”

I say unto you, “maybe, but not for better physical health.”

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