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A sample of 299 young people between the ages of 12 and 18 attending a week-long summer youth programme sponsored by the Canadian Baptists of Atlantic Canada completed the Adolescent form of the Francis Psychological Type Scales together with the Francis Scale of Attitude toward Christianity. The data demonstrated that a more positive attitude toward Christianity was associated with a preference for feeling (rather than thinking) and with a preference for judging (rather than perceiving), and that retention rates were lower for extraverts and for intuitive types. The article concludes by recommending psychological type awareness courses within youth ministry training programmes to enhance understanding attrition and retention of young people within Christian activities.

The Francis Burnout Inventory (FBI) conceptualised poor work-related psychological health in the terms of the classic model of balanced affect proposed by Bradburn. Operationalised specifically for application among clergy and religious professionals, in the FBI negative affect is assessed by the 11-item Scale of Emotional Exhaustion in Ministry (SEEM) and positive affect is assessed by the 11-item Satisfaction in Ministry Scale (SIMS). In the present study the FBI was completed by 803 Methodist ministers in Great Britain together with two independent measures hypothesised as reflecting the consequence of burnout, dissatisfaction with present appointment, and thoughts of leaving ministry. These data were employed to test the significance of the interaction between SEEM and SIMS in predicting these independent measures. In support of the theory of balanced affect, these data demonstrated that the mitigating impact of positive affect increased with increasing levels of negative affect.

Drawing on data from 9,851 young people between the ages of 8 and 14 years who completed surveys while attending Catholic, Protestant, or Pentecostal churches as part of the 2016 Australian National Church Life Survey, the study employed multiple regression modelling to test two hypotheses regarding the linkages between religion and happiness among young churchgoers. The first hypothesis is that there is a positive association between religion and happiness. The second hypothesis is that the association between religion and happiness is routed through religious affect rather than through religious practice. The data support both hypotheses, and demonstrate the negative impact of church attendance on happiness among this age group when church attendance (external religiosity) is not supported by positive religious affect (internal religiosity).

As part of the Church Growth Research Programme in 2013 Voas and Watt collected the psychological profiles of 1,164 clergymen and 307 clergywomen serving in stipendiary parochial ministry, using the Francis Psychological Type Scales. This paper sets these data alongside the profile of 626 clergymen and 237 clergywomen published in 2007. This comparison suggests a significant movement among both clergymen and clergywomen away from intuition and away from perceiving. This results in a significant increase in the SJ temperament among Anglican clergy (from 31% to 39% among clergymen and from 29% to 40% among clergywomen), suggesting a movement toward a more conserving and less adventurous approach to ministry. At the same time the gap has narrowed in the preference between thinking and feeling among clergymen and clergywomen, enhancing the feminine profile of clergymen and reducing the feminine profile of clergywomen.

This study examines the psychometric properties of a modified short form of the Francis Scale of Attitude toward Christianity. While the original seven-item short form contained two negatively voiced items, this modified form contains only one negatively voiced item, in order to improve the performance of the instrument among younger participants. Data provided by 10,084 young churchgoers between the ages of 8 and 14 years support the internal consistency reliability and construct validity of the instrument across the age range and commend the instrument for further use in research among this age group.

Catholic teaching since the time of the Second Vatican Council has emphasised the importance of the home in the nurture of young Catholics (sometimes referred to as ecclesia domestica). Drawing on data from 2,131 young people between the ages of 8 and 14 years who completed surveys while attending Catholic churches as part of the 2016 Australian National Church Life Survey, this study employed multiple regression modelling to examine the effects of parental church attendance (treating mother and fathers separately) and home environment (in terms of family encouragement and religious engagement within the home) on frequency of child church attendance. The data demonstrated that parental church attendance is the strongest predictor. Young Catholics are more likely to attend church frequently if both mother and father come to church a lot. Moreover, after taking parental church attendance into account the home environment adds additional predictive power. Young Catholics are most likely to attend church frequently if both parents attend church and support faith within the home environment through both family encouragement and religious engagement within the home. When parental churchgoing and home environment have been taken into account, the external factors of engaging with online religious resources and of attending a Catholic school add no further positive predictive power in sustaining churchgoing among young Catholics.

The present study draws on data generated by the Church Growth Research Programme among 1,268 full-time stipendiary Church of England clergy aged 68 or under to test the extent to which the sense of feeling supported by professional advisers (positive affect) may offset the sense of feeling stressed (negative affect), after taking into account a range of personal, psychological, environmental and theological or ecclesial factors. The data found that the sense of feeling supported by professional advisers reduced the levels of self-reported stress after controlling for personal, psychological, environmental, and theological or ecclesial factors. The implications of these findings for the provision of formal support mechanisms within dioceses is discussed.\ud \ud

This study draws on psychological temperament theory (a development from psychological type theory) to map the characteristics of 95 Catholic priests and 61 religious sisters in Italy, who completed the Francis Psychological Type Scales. The data demonstrated a strong preference for sensing and judging (the Epimethean Temperament, SJ) among both priests (71%) and religious sisters (61%). In their study of religious leadership, Oswald and Kroeger characterised the SJ preference as ‘the conserving serving pastor’. The implications of these findings are discussed for leadership strengths and weaknesses in the Catholic Church.