Religion and sport - relations and perspectives

Abstract

Religion (faith) plays a very important role in the lives of many
individuals and therefore, in the last few decades, it has become
increasingly frequent in research, both in general population and
in clinical environment. In social researches, religion (faith) is often
defined as the power of religious beliefs or as intrinsic religiosity.
This paper presents the often used measures of faith, such as the
Santa Clara Strength of Religious Faith Questionnaire, of the authors
Plante and Boccaccini, 1997, and the Duke University Religion
Index, of the authors Koenig and Büssing, 2010. Because of the
multiple culturality of western society in which these questionnaires
have originated, they are most often constructed to measure religiosity
in persons who may belong to different denominations within a
religion and to different religions. The basic findings of the established
relationships between the measures of religiosity and various
psychological constructs in general and in some clinical populations,
especially in the athletes and youth population, are presented.
There was a positive correlation between the power of religiosity and
self-esteem of the examinees as well as between the power of religiosity
with perceived coping, with hope and optimism as the measures
of positive psychology. The results of various studies conducted in
the Croatian society were also presented. Guidelines, as well as the
possible research issues for the implementation of future researches,
are proposed.