The Higher Education Research Institute at UCLA yesterday released an interesting study, Spirituality and the Professoriate: A National Study of Faculty Beliefs, Attitudes, and Behaviors, as part of its Spirituality in Higher Education Project. Today’s Inside Higher Ed and Chronicle of Higher Education report on the study. From the Inside Higher Ed article:
The following are summary results on spirituality (which was largely left to survey participants to define, but doesn’t necessarily mean following any particular religious faith). The results come from a survey of more than 40,000 faculty members at 421 colleges.
Faculty Members on Their Spirituality
|
Question |
Not at All |
To Some Extent |
To a Great Extent |
|
Do you consider yourself religious? |
37% |
29% |
35% |
|
Do you consider yourself spiritual? |
19% |
34% |
48% |
|
Do you engage in prayer/meditation? |
39% |
35% |
26% |
|
Do you engage in self-reflection? |
2% |
30% |
68% |
Generally, the survey found women more likely to think of themselves as spiritual and to have characteristics associated with a high degree of spirituality. Beyond gender, there were clear patterns about spirituality by race and ethnicity and by institution type.
Black faculty members are the most likely (66%) to identify themselves as spiritual “to a great extent.” They are followed by American Indians (60%), Native Hawaiians/Pacific Islanders (59%), Puerto Ricans (57%), Chicanos (53%), whites (48%) and Asian Americans (37%).
