Comparison of personality traits and internal and external religious beliefs in adolescents with and without high risk behaviors

This study was proposed to compare the personality components and the internal and external religious beliefs of adolescents with and without high-risk behaviors. The method used to conduct such comparison was a post-event or causal-comparative type. Do to so, considering Cochrane table, a sample of 338 adolescents with high-risk (168) and without high-risk (170 persons) behaviors were selected and their characteristics were verified using Short Personality Questionnaire (1985) and Allport Religious Orientation Questionnaire (1967). The obtained information were statistically analyzed by one-way variance analysis (MANOVA). According to the obtained results of the statistical analyses, significanltly different personality components and internal and external religious beliefs were found in adolescents with and without high-risk behaviors. Accordingly, it could be concluded that meaningful relationship exists between the high-risk behaviors and either personality traits or internal and external religious beliefs of adolescents, thereby, more investigations would be required to better understand such mutual interactions to be able to be used to control and manipulate high-risk behaviors of the adolescents.