Young Adults and Religion in a Global Perspective: Towards a Methodology for Studies of Contemporary Cross-Cultural Variations

Åbo Akademi University’s Centre of Excellence 2015-2018 in the YARG project is looking at how religion appears to young adults in a global context. Today, many claim that contemporary religion is undergoing a comprehensive change, and that this kind of change is strongly linked to the fact the world young people – digital natives – are growing up in is saturated with the media, consumer culture and social movements. At the same time, the world is becoming increasingly marked by a polarisation between pluralism and radicalisation.

The methodological development required by this study makes it challenging. Religion in today’s global context does not allow itself to be restricted by the concepts and tools available to us. For this reason, the YARG project is striving to further develop a new instrument based on Q methodology. The study is set to be carried out in Finland, Sweden, China, India, Israel, Peru, Ghana, Poland, Russia and the USA.

The research project YARG (Young Adults and Religion in a Global Perspective: A Cross‐cultural, Comparative and Mixed‐method Study of Religious Subjectivities and Values in their Context) is led by Professor in Study of Religions Peter Nynäs.