By Howard Goldstein
Seventeen-year-old Mepham High School senior Barry Dolinger recently reached the semifinals of the prestigious Intel Science-Research Competition with a study that used a unique set of statistics: degrees of religiosity.
Dolinger's project, "The Correlation Among Factors of Religiosity and Academic Success Among High School Seniors," began last year with Dolinger's attempt to quantify "religiosity."
"There really is no scientifically accepted religiosity scale," said Dolinger, "so I had to create one."
After reading the works of various theologians and religious philosophers, Dolinger laid out criteria for religiosity.
Many philosophers disagree over how to best define religiosity. Some argue that the phenomenon can be explained as an innate spiritual awareness and connection to a Higher Power, while others see religiosity in terms of observable behavior rooted in the dictates of organized religions.
Dolinger took a combined approach, devising a survey that hit on experts' most-important factors of spirituality.
For example, the survey used contained questions such as "How often do you attend services", an outward manifestation, with "Why do you go?" to reflect internal spirituality.
The completed survey had about 30 questions and was completed by 100 students at Mepham High School.
"It had to be a high-school population," Dolinger said, "since I was testing to find a correlation between belief/observance and academic performance. The school board gave permission for us to look at the academic record, although I didn't see students' names, only grades, so I don't know who is who."
According to statisticians involved in helping with the project, 100 surveys out of a class of 301 is a large enough sample size to obtain reliable results. The project research revealed no correlation at all between religion and school performance, a surprise to Dolinger.
"I had hypothesized," he said, "that religiosity and academic success would be positively correlated because I thought that the discipline and values of a religious system would translate into behavior that promoted success in another [educational] system."
Dolinger, who practices Judaism and studies Talmud on Sundays, believes that this project could lead to other studies.
"The fact that there is no good definition of religiosity remains interesting," he said, "and there is a very clear split statistically between people who outwardly practice and those who are spiritual [believe in God or a Higher Power but not in the tenets of organized religion].
"Further division among these groups and subsequent studies could be interesting."
For now, Dolinger is awaiting the decision of the Intel judges to be announced on Jan. 29. If selected, he becomes a finalist and will compete in Washington, D.C.
The Intel grand prize is $100,000. All prizes are matched to the school, and Dolinger and Mepham have already received $1,000.
Dolinger hopes to get into Harvard or Yale next semester to study political science and international relations.
"I am very excited to be chosen as a semi-finalist, and I hope this will open a lot of doors and further research," Dolinger said.
He added, "I want to thank my mentor, Dr. David Kommor; head of the Science Department at Mepham Laura Maitland; Dr. Bernard Gorman [a Hofstra statistician who helped with the project]; my Rabbi, Harvey Goldscheider, of Temple Beth-El for continuing my interest in religion; my parents Linda and Mark; Mepham Principal John Didden, and the Mepham administration."
