The master’s thesis deals with the concept of religious coping in relation to the strength of faith and psychological well-being. In the theoretical part, we defined the concepts of religiosity and spirituality, summarized the different attitudes towards religiosity within the psychology of religion, outlined the way religious coping has been researched from its origins to the present day, explained the differences between positive and negative religious coping, defined spiritual struggles and demonstrated how religious coping relates to psychological well-being. We further summarized some key aspects of research on the strength of faith and defined the concept of psychological well-being through six categories.
In the empirical part, we used a quantitative survey to research the extent to which the use of religious coping with life's hardships occurs in the Slovenian religious population, how it relates to the strength of faith, and how it relates to psychological well-being. We were interested in whether there are differences between men and women across all categories and differences between the less religious and the more religious in terms of psychological well-being. 208 participants took part in the study. We found a strong association between positive religious coping and the strength of one's faith. There was no association between positive and negative religious coping. There was a negative association between negative religious coping and psychological well-being. We found no significant differences between men and women, and between less religious and more religious people, regarding religious coping, strength of faith, or psychological well-being.
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