Childhood Experiences and Adult Prayer or Meditation in 22 Countries Around the World

Background: Few studies have examined how childhood experiences and characteristics shape daily prayer or meditation in adulthood across countries around the world using nationally-representative data. Methods: The current study addresses this limitation by analyzing data from the Global Flourishing Study (GFS), an international survey of 202,898 individuals from 22 geographically, economically, and culturally diverse countries collected in 2022-2023. Results: Father-child relations, early-life religious attendance, year of birth, and gender were associated with adult daily prayer or meditation in a meta-analysis of all 22 countries. Parental marital status, economic conditions, abuse and adversity, health, and immigration status were not significant in the pooled analysis, but were important in one or more countries. All childhood characteristics showed some variation across nations. E-values suggested that the strongest associations were robust against confounding from unmeasured covariates. Conclusion: Cross-national research is difficult for many reasons including language barriers, norms regarding talking about sensitive issues, and survey question translation and interpretation issues. Despite these, findings show meaningful associations between numerous childhood characteristics and adult prayer or meditation around the world. Results also reveal considerable variation across countries and cultures. This work lays the foundation for future longitudinal GFS studies on the causes and correlates of prayer or meditation in a global context.