A Study into the Development Stages of the Emotional Component of Faith in God in Childhood and Adolescence

This paper seeks to examine the development stages of the emotional component of the faith in God among youngsters and teenagers using a cross-sectional method. 198 boys and girls, 7 to 17 years old have been selected from Qom by the method of stratified random sampling. The research data have been gathered based on a clinical method and semi-structured solo interviews and the results have been scored by five experts. The data have been assessed by the method of variance analysis. The results indicate that with the increase in age, the emotional faith gets stronger. Furthermore based on the results obtained the process of the development of the emotional component of faith in God among youngsters and teenagers has the following steps: Having the feeling that God is kind, confabulating with God, having an intimate relationship with God, having the sense of appreciation or shame before God. Moreover a comparison between girl`s grades and boy`s grades notifies the significant difference of the two sexes in this component, and that the girl`s grades are higher than the boy`s grades.