Responses were scored as “not important at all” (1), “somewhat important” (2), “important” (3), and “very important” (4). The five items were highly correlated, and the Cronbach's alpha was 0.92 at wave 1 and 0.95 at wave 2. Religiosity scores were taken as the average score across all 5 items, unless more than 1 item was missing, in which case they were scored as missing. Given that these items assessed importance rather than actual behavior, religiosity in this study is more accurately described as an assessment of religious values, which is similar to the concept of intrinsic religion (Bouchard, Jr. et al. 1999). Religiosity scores were regressed on age separately within sex, and the standardized residuals were used for further analyses.
