A causal model on adolescents' high-risk behaviors based on religious beliefs and self-compassion mediated by emotion regulation and social support.

High risk behaviors are behaviors that endanger the health and well-being of adolescents. The aim of this study was to investigate the mediating role of emotion regulation and social support in the relationship between religious beliefs and self-compassion with tendency to risky behaviors in adolescents. This research is a correlational study conducted in the form of path analysis. The population included all high school male students in Tehran, 220 of whom were selected using multistage cluster sampling. To collect data, Sirajzadeh (2007) Religious Attitudes Questionnaire, Tendency to High-Risk Behaviors of ZadehMohammadi et al. (2008), Perceived Social Support Questionnaire by Vaux et al. (1986), Self-compassion Questionnaire by Neff et al. (2003) and emotion regulation by Garnefski et. al (1999) were used. Finally, the data were analyzed using SPSS/Amos version 25. The results of Pearson correlation test showed that there is a significant correlation between religious beliefs and tendency to high-risk behaviors (r=0.21; p= 0.01). Also, the final model of the study showed that religious beliefs mediate social support (β=-0.23 and negative emotion regulation (β= 0.53) to explain almost half of the variance of high-risk behaviors. The findings also showed that its fit indices were at the desired level (RMSEA= 0.07; GFI= 0.99; CFI= 0.99; NFI= 0.92). Based on the findings of the present study, it can be concluded that religious beliefs can be provided by providing social support and effective strategies to regulate the emotion of trauma versus the tendency to high-risk behaviors of adolescents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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