Homeschooling and Taking Kids to Church Matter More for Life, Study Suggests

Published: Wed, 02/02/22

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Homeschooling and Taking Kids to Church Matter More for Life, Study Suggests

Introduction

A fascinating study just came out. Scholars Ying Chen, Christina Hinton, and Tyler VanderWeele (2021) published their work, “School types in adolescence and subsequent health and well-being in young adulthood: An outcome-wide analysis.” In it, they compared the backgrounds in adolescence and outcomes in adulthood of those who were homeschooled, private schooled, and public schooled. Overall, they found that homeschooling is related to positive outcomes in adulthood.

The various after-effects included “a wide range of subsequent psychological well-being, social engagement, character strengths, mental health, health behavior and physical health outcomes” (p. 1). Specific examples are becoming registered voters, risk of being overweight/obese, number of lifetime sexual partners, frequency of attending religious services, and risk of binge drinking.

First impressions matter. Scholarly articles, including those by this author, usually address a study’s limitations near the end of the report. And since “man prefers to believe what he prefers to be true” (goodreads.com, 2022) this time this author will address the boundaries of the research up front. This will help no one to go off trumpeting or blasting the conclusions of the scholars any more than they should.

Methods

The data came from children of female registered nurses and were collected via the Nurses’ Health Study II (NHSII) and the Growing Up Today Study (GUTS). In 1999, the nurses’ children were of mean age 14.56 years (with a range of 11 to 19) and in 2010 their mean age was 25.10 years.

. . . . . [continue research article] And please see comments below.

--Brian D. Ray, Ph.D.

National Home Education Research Institute

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Keywords, Categories, Tags:

Public school, independent school, private school, homeschooling, home education, adulthood, flourishing, well-being, socialization, social development

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