Divorce-Proofing, less than .01% divorce.(L)

I've heard and read the figure that less than 1% of couples who regularly pray together divorce. I was looking for the source for it online. One website said their was a 2001 Southern Baptist Poll.

But here is another website that actually cites a study,
The Couple that Prays Together | Dr. David Stoop

One of the outcomes of that study led to the National Association of Marriage Enhancement, in Phoenix, Arizona (NAME: National Association of Marriage Enhancement | NAME Online) to report that when couples prayed together on a daily basis, less than 1% of those couples would end up getting a divorce. The numbers were 1 out of 1156. Pretty amazing when the divorce rate in the general population is reportedly around 50%.

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I haven't been able to find the study. (I did not look at the nameonline site that much) to examine how they did the study. But 1156 is a pretty hefty sample size of couples who pray together daily. Even if they interviewed people at a block party in Phoenix and got those numbers, and it wasn't a random sample, with a sample that big, those are some results to consider.

I tired to use a calculator to calculate the percentage and got this as an answer: 8.650519031141869e-4

It's so low, it's got a negative exponent of 4.

Tropical Wilds said:

I suspect that has more to do with the beliefs of those who pray than the act of praying saving the marriage. It also doesn't answer to the success of the marriage, only the fact that it's lasted.

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Lasting would seem to be one of the best measures a researcher could use for success.

The page I liked to also talked about the relationship between church activities and prayer and marital satisfaction. I assume the causal arrows go from church activity and prayer to satisfaction rather than the other way around.

The study looked at 1387 couples with an over representation of ethnic minorities. The results were stated in terms of marital satisfaction. Some of their findings were to be expected. Those couples who shared the same faith, and who regularly attended church services together, reported a higher level of marital satisfaction. Those who were involved in activities at the church also reported an even higher level of marital satisfaction.
The most interesting finding to me was that when couples shared religious practices at home, which included reading the Bible together and praying together, the level of marital satisfaction was even significantly higher. Those shared behaviors in the home had a strong impact on how satisfied each was with their marriage. The strength of those statistics on shared religious practices were strong enough that the researchers also believed that if couples would share these practices in their home, those behaviors could be seen as predictors of a strong marriage, and obviously a higher degree of marital satisfaction.

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Emphasis (in bold) is mine. I wonder if 'significantly' refers to statistical significance or significance. Even so, it is an interesting finding. My academic field is not marriage and family, but I think self-reported satisfaction is one of the main measures of successful marriages in the field.


I'd like to see the religion of the participants in the sample, and I'd like to see the results broken down by religion with statistical comparisons between groups.



Btw, don't you believe God answers prayers? Praying for each other every day is a powerful thing for a believer to do.

The stats between evangelicals divorcing and unbelievers in the US are pretty similar. It may have a lot to do with beliefs. Christians who are genuine and sincere enough to put their faith into practice in prayer, may tend to be the types who are genuine and sincere enough to put their faith into practice in marriage, and are therefore more likely to divorce. But I think some of it is God answering their prayers, too.

ImperialPhantom said:

+1

I can't believe how often this pseudo study is quoted as science. It is such a small sample size and there is no accounting for how the study was framed how how the couples were selected. There is no questioning the visits of prayer in my mind but there IS a questioning of the validity of such a random study, and it surprises me how few people question it.

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Your quote reminds me of what Campbell, was it, the research methods guy, said to Kinsey, something along the lines of the idea that he'd rather see him have a small random sample of a hundred people than a thousand people he'd met in bars. The Kinsey study gets quoted a lot, but that was really bad, methodologically, especially the way they chose the samples. And it seems likely kids got molested to get the results, which is pretty sick and unethical if that is the case. People still cite the study to argue for a 10% homosexual figure, in spite of the fact that the samples were in no way representative of the population.

I've never actually seen the study. I am not sure what the population is they were drawing from, whether Christians or nonChristians, or what. But if there is a population drawn up in any sensible manner of over 1000, that is definitely a huge population to draw from. Even if it were not randomly selected, it could be worth paying attention to with that population size. But I don't know how they framed the questions or how the operationalized satisfaction. I'm assuming it was self-reported satisfaction, but that's just a guess.

I would actually like to see the study. It might be worth taking the time to dig through the paper and the statistics someday.