ABSTRACT
This chapter explores personal theologies open-ended questions that invite free response and presume as little as possible while still assuming that the author's are talking about matters of foundational theology. Examining facets of personal theology using a grounded-theory approach is still somewhat unique in the study of core beliefs and values, among both theologians and social scientists. When dealing with interviews, grounded-theory method as a bottom-up inductive approach begins with people's responses. The chapter adopts clausal coding strategies as a means of offering a more exhaustive exploratory analysis of young adults' beliefs and values. Coding and classification methods varied slightly for each facet of personal theology, but always began with clausal analysis. Demographic variables were examined to evaluate any gross differences in aspects of personal theology. Finally, the chapter only uses those variables with statistically significant or suggestive relationships with personal theology in any multivariate regression analyses.
