The Relation of Religiousness to Hope: The Mediating Role of Patience

The aim of this study was to develop a structural model to determine the relationships among components of religiousness, hope, and patience. The study method was correlational. Five hundred and twenty seven students were selected from Shiraz University using multi-stage cluster sampling. The participants completed the Religiousness Questionnaire (Glock &Stark, 1965), the Patience Scale (Khormaei, Farmani & Soltani, 2014), and the Hope Scale (Snyder, 1996). The results indicated the proposed model fitted the data well. Religiousness had a direct effect on patience and patience had a direct effect on hope. Religiousness related to hope indirectly through patience. The finding suggested that the emphasize should be more on religious beliefs (such as divine knowledge) and religious affection (such as attaching to God) than on religious rituals and consequences. In other words, if different dimensions of religion are accompanied with patience, the level of individuals’ hope will raise up and this will create more fulfilled and purposeful youth lives than the practice of religiousness education alone. The outputs of these processes will be generation of theories and models that may be useful and effective for applying in educational, counseling, and therapeutic settings.