Data and Measures
Like many previous studies of differences in social attitudes addressing a
wide range of social phenomena, our investigation uses data from the GSS.
The GSS is an appropriate data set because it contains survey items tapping
attitudes toward psychological trauma and economic concerns, as well as
information on the various background characteristics of respondents. In
order to examine the questions of interest, the 1978, 1988, and 1998 survey
years are employed for the analysis. We select these years because the items
of interest are asked in each of these years, and the survey years represent a
twenty year time comparison. Separate analyses are run for each of the sur-
vey years.
Dependent Variables
Religiosity. Frequency of attendance at religious services is measured through
an eight-point ordinal scale with higher scores indicating more frequent atten-
dance. A score of zero means that the respondent did not attend religious
services at all during the last year. A score of eight (8) represents respondents
who attended religious services several times a week.
Independent Variables
Psychological variables. Separate items were selected to represent psychologi-
cal trauma. For the 1978 and 1988 GSS, the question (similar to Ellison – see
above) pertaining to the number of traumatic events (deaths, divorces, unem-
ployment, or hospitalizations – disabilities) happening to the respondent last
year is used to construct a dummy variable. The variable represents respon-
dents who experienced one or more of the events either directly or indirectly.
The 1998 GSS does not contain the same item above but does include six
items gauging negative affect in the last thirty days. The first item addresses
the extent to which respondents feel that nothing could cheer them up. The
GSS asks the following question: “In the past 30 days, about how often do
you feel so sad that nothing could cheer you up?” The response categories
for the item are (1) all of the time, (2) most of the time, (3) some of the time,
(4) a little of the time, and (5) none of the time. The same response categories
and wording of the question are used for “nervous,” “restless or fidgety,”
“hopeless,” “that everything was an effort,” and “worthless.” To construct
an index, the coding for the six items is reversed, and the responses are
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