The Effect of Religious School as a Moderator between the Determinants and Participation in the Spiritual Activities

This study was conducted to evaluate the effect of moderating factor namely religious school on the relationship between the determinants and participation in the spiritual activities among Malaysian Muslim youth. This quantitative research was performed using a survey method through questionnaires. The total of 623 samples selection in this study using the technique of the proportional cluster random sampling from undergraduate students at the selected Malaysia Public University. Theory of Planned Behaviour (Ajzen, 1985) was applied as a basis for this study. The results of the Hierarchical Regression analysis revealed that the religious school was found to have significant and positive moderator effect on the relationship between spiritual practices and participation. Instead of attitudes, environmental influences perceived behavioural control, appreciation of religion and demographic characteristics affect positively to the participation of Muslim youth in spirituality development program. Thus, all parties including educational institutions, family and communities need to give more emphasis to one’s religious education factor to ensure a holistic youth development towards nation building of the country. fajr tahlil

Further, although the Muslim students today are largely have been exposed to Islamic religious education in schools, but the appreciation is less emphasized (Awang et al., 2017).Spirituality elements absorbed through moral education, civic and Islamic education in schools are insufficient to foster and form the identity of the youth (Faizatul, 2014). What concern the parents are, the moral collapse that occurs among students at school or hostel (Mohd I. H. et al., 2012).According to Mohamad Zuhdi et al. (2016), religious schools are also active in participating in various activities organized by outside parties such as solar car competitions, water rockets, speeches, parliamentary-style debate, football and so on. Such participation proves that religious school students are not merely on religious learning, but they are also actively involved in all activities.
Based on the discussion of issues and problems above, hence it is very important for youth to participate in a youth development program, especially spiritual activities. This is because their involvement in these activities can indirectly reduce social problems and negative symptoms among youths. Next, through their participation, it may also foster a positive potential within themselves. Hence, the relatively low participation of youth in the spiritual activities needs to be addressed immediately.
Therefore, it is appropriate and important to identify the effect of religious school on the relationship between the determinants and participation in the spiritual activities among Malaysian Muslim youth. Thus, the purpose of this study to identify whether the religious schools could act as a moderator to the determining factors that influence the Muslim youth participation in the spiritual activities.

Literature Review
There are several research studies from the West showed that religious and spirituality participation is an important dimension in youth development. Based on data obtained from The Project Teen Canada, Bibby (2006) found that 75% of respondents regard themselves as religious members, 60% is found that spirituality elements are important, and 48% stated that they have spiritual needs. The finding is consistent with Benson and Roehlkepartain (2008) view that most of the youths make the development of spirituality as an important part of their lives. King and Boyatzis (2004) also commented that the adolescent era may be an important period of time to study the development of spirituality.
In the context of study in Malaysia, Sharifah and Sharifah (2011) conducted a study to review the requirements for implementation of spiritual activity among Muslim trainee teachers at the Institute of Teacher Education (IPG) Batu Lintang. Their study showed that trainees need spiritual activities such as Yasin recitation, funeral prayer, tazkirah, usrah, slaughtering, ta'lim (after Maghrib, Isyak and fajr prayer), tahlil and forum especially in approaching Allah s.w.t. From their results, they suggested that the session or class discussion on women fiqh, religious matter and current issues should be held. They also recommended organizing more hands-on workshops like cooking, sewing, slaughtering, funeral, khat writing, mentor-mentee program and Quran recital involving teachers, lecturers and staff.
Meanwhile, the result of the study by Mohd I. M. and Salini (2010) has shown that most respondents give positive perceptions of the activities of usrah and provide good feedback on the effectiveness of usrah activities. This descriptive study was conducted at SMKA (P) Al-Mashoor, Penang. The respondents of the study consisted of 111 students, the whole population of Form 4 students in the school. However, their study found that the most effective approaches to ensure the effectiveness of usrah are through the usrah leader. This is because the usrah leader plays a very important role and driving force of each step.
The Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB) proposed by (Ajzen (1985); Ajzen, 1991) has been successfully applied to explain goal-directed human behaviour (Taylor and Todd, 1995). Thus, the TPB is used as the basis for this study. This theory explains the intention to perform a behaviour is influenced by an individual's attitude towards behaviour, subjective norms and perceived behavioural control (Ajzen, 1991). However, there are still not many studies reported in the field of youth participation particularly in the spiritual activity in Malaysia that is based on TPB and supported by other additional variables. Moreover, this study adds to a number of independent variables as a new branch of knowledge based on the literature under study of appreciation of religion (Turiman et al., 2011), spirituality practices (Mohd R. B. and Azmil, 2015) and demographic characteristics (age, rural residence location and stay on university campus) (Clerkin et al., 2009;Muzindutsi and Viljoen, 2016).
According to Rose-Krasnor and Ramey (2012),youth who involved psychologically in an activity enjoy some benefits, including the development of self-esteem, quality friendship and positive self-concept. Although psychological participation (e.g., enjoyment, concentration) has proven as an important predictor in fostering positive outcomes of youth activity participation, nevertheless there is only a few studies have been conducted to establish its role in positive youth development (Ramey et al., 2015). Psychological participation encompasses three dimensions namely cognitive (e.g. thinking about the activity, concentrating while performing the activity or focus), affective (e.g. enjoyment, importance), and relational/ spiritual (e.g. meaningfulness, connectedness to something outside the self) (Ramey et al., 2015;Rose-Krasnor, 2009). In the context of this study, the intended participation as defined by (Barki and Hartwick, 1994), is the act of participating or engaging in an activity in which participation is participated by Muslim youth in the spiritual activities. In terms of measurement, participation is measured by referring to psychological participation consisting of three dimensions namely cognitive, affective and spiritual (Rose-Krasnor, 2009).
In TPB, attitude is one of the main variables to anticipate one's behaviour (Ajzen, 1991). In the previous literature of the study from the West, it showed that there is a relationship between attitude and participation in activities such as leisure time (Chih-Mou, 1998; Ragheb and Tate, 1993) and physical activity (Gretebeck et al., 2007;Hamilton and White, 2008). Generally, attitude can be referred to as assessing the impact of positive or negative feelings of an individual to perform a certain behaviour (Fishbein and Ajzen, 1975). The beliefs underlie a person's attitude towards the behaviour are termed behavioural beliefs (Ajzen and Fishbein, 1980). According to Ajzen (1991) in the Theory of Planned Behaviour, attitude is key variables that determine a person's behaviour. The enhancement of participation behaviour is based on a person's efforts and a good or bad assessment of a behaviour. Therefore, based on the definition of attitude by Ajzen (1991), this study defines attitude toward the participation in the spiritual activity as a good or bad evaluation of a Muslim youth on the participation in the spiritual activity. Hence, the attitude in this study is measured as a whole which refers to the perceptions, thoughts and feelings of Muslim youth towards spiritual activity. The attitude of a person can have an impact on participation. Therefore, attitude factor is expected to have an influence on youth participation in the spiritual activity.
Environmental influences known as subjective norms also play a role in influencing behaviours as suggested by the TPB. Subjective norm refers to individual perceptions towards other individual's behaviour who considered important for themselves (Ajzen, 1991). Bobek and Hatfield (2003) state that subjective norm is individual beliefs of the individual against specific individuals or groups whether to permit or not to perform a behaviour. Thereby, environmental influences in the context of this study refers to subjective norms (reference groups) as defined the perception of Muslim youth towards other individuals or particular groups (parents, teachers, friends, the management of university/ colleges/ faculties and the community) which considered are important for him/ herself to participate in the spiritual activities. Its weight is measured by looking at the motivation of an individual, including opinion and support to comply (Zainol, 2008). The environmental influences (subjective norm) is a construct that has a direct relationship towards the intention of a person's behaviour (Ajzen and Fishbein, 1980). In previous studies, the influence of subjective norms on behavioural intentions showed that it has a significant effect on behavioural intention (Ajzen and Driver, 1991;Ajzen et al., 2004;Elliott et al., 2003). Furthermore, the findings of Malaysia studies (Baharin et al., 2008;Hamzah. et al., 2015;Turiman et al., 2011) have also proven that the environmental influences factors have a significant relationship to the behaviour of the participation in the activity. Based on the above discussion, it is desirable for this study to examine the environmental influences factor in the concept of subjective norms from various reference groups as one of the determining factors to youth participation in spiritual activities.
In TPB, perceived behavioural control refers to the degree of control of an individual over the behaviour to be performed. It relates to an individual's perceptions of whether it is easy or difficult for him to perform a behaviour (Ajzen, 1985;1991). This easy or difficult assessment usually depends on the existence of internal and external control factors on the behaviour. Internal control factors include personal skills, capabilities, knowledge and emotions such as stress and so on. External control factors come from the environment such as the availability of resources and opportunities (Ajzen, 1985). Thus, this study defines perceived behavioural control as the perception of Muslim youth whether it is easy or difficult for him to participate in the spiritual activities. Previous researchers reported perceived behavioural control were significantly associated with behavioural intentions. Perceived behavioural control has been reported as an important factor affecting behaviours in various areas of study such as taxation (Bobek and Hatfield, 2003),zakat (Zainol, 2008), technology (Taylor and Todd, 1995), the purchase of halal products (Syed and Sayuti., 2011), governance environment (Teo et al., 2013), entrepreneurship (Malebana, 2014) and activity participation (Gretebeck et al., 2007;Hamilton and White, 2008;Hamzah. et al., 2015;Mummery et al., 2000). Accordingly, in the context of activity participation, it is expected to clarify that Muslim youths who have a high level of perceived behaviour control will participate better in spiritual activities.
The appreciation of religion is the fourth independent variable in this study refers to the appreciation of Islam which is implementing the practical teaching of Islam with all the scope of comprehensiveness and it must be rooted on the knowledge, understanding and practice (Nor, 2006).Al-Qardawi and Yusuf (1984) describes the concept of religious appreciation as appreciate the religion in all aspects of life comprehensively, based on the understanding to appreciate the akidah as a way of life, ibadah as a practice of life, syariah as a rule and consideration of life, and noble character (akhlak) as ethics of life includes abstaining from shirk and other acts forbidden by God. In the context of Islamic society in Malaysia, the term of religious appreciation or al-tadayyun is commonly refers as implementation and practising of religion by a Muslim in his life, whether it involves the scope of its influence individually such as akidah, ibadah dan akhlak; or skips out into its concern area such as Syariah implementation involving other individuals, families, communities and countries; based on their knowledge and understanding about religion (Zulkiple and Nor, 2006). Therefore, the appreciation of religion in this study refers to the belief, obedience and practice of religion which includes aspects of akidah, ibadah and akhlak.
Previous studies on the relation between the appreciation of religion and activity participation are limited, but the appreciation of religion in the various other areas has been carried out. Several Western studies showed that the youths who adhere to a religion have a low degree of involvement in unhealthy activity (Gorsuch, 1995;Johnson et al., 2002). A study conducted by Steinman (2004) explained that religion is a protective factor for youths from conducting illegal behaviour. Michelle et al. (1989) found that perfect religious holdings can be the basis for youths to think wisely before doing something immoral. Meanwhile, a study in Malaysia by Turiman et al. (2011)showed that religion, society, rewards, support, career, tendency, level of knowledge about voluntary works and level of knowledge about voluntary organizations have significant relationships towards participation in voluntary activities. The religious appreciation within Muslim youth will encourage them to assess the good or bad of any behavioural or action and may further influence the participation of Muslim youth in spiritual activities in Malaysia. Construct of religious appreciation is measured based on three dimensions namely akidah (Rukun Iman), ibadah (Rukun Islam) and akhlak (the compulsory and commendable qualities of Rasulullah namely true, wise, conveying, trust, patience, socialization, dressing, conversation and relationship with parents and communities).
Then, the fifth independent variable in this study is spirituality practices. In general, spirituality refers to matters relating to spirits. Whereas in a wider meaning, means the intrinsic spirit that belongs to all the matters in the world (Kamus Dewan, 2005). It covers all aspects of human life on the earth as a preparation for the hereafter. By implementation of spirituality practices in life, youth will be able to shape their personality into a clever student, having a complete reliance with the Creator and to fortify himself from getting trapped into improper elements. Such efforts will invoke the pleasure of Allah and then proclaim the excellent achievement in daily life (Salasiah et al., 2012). According to Mohd R. B. and Azmil (2015), the implementation of religious activities can contribute to spiritual practice even though it is at a moderate level. While the study by Muhammad N. A. W. and Urme (2013) on the Muslim students in secondary schools who suffering from physical problems, head injuries and asthma, have revealed that spirituality practices help students in positive behavioural change and increase the participation in the activities of psychophysiology. Hence, the discussion in this study clearly shows that spirituality practice is one of the important elements to increase the participation of Muslim youth in spiritual activities. Spirituality practices in the context of this study include the practice of reciting the Quran, congregational prayer (solat berjemaah), the Sunnah prayer such as rawatib, dhuha, and hajat, qiamullail, muhasabah and fasting sunnah.
This study incorporates aspects of demographic characteristics namely age, rural residence location and stays on the university campus to test whether it has influence with activity participation. Rayfield et al. (2008) emphasize that demographic changes, the deterioration of rural populations, the role of schools in society, and the importance of co-curricular activities have created a need to understand how and why students in rural schools take part in organizations or participate in development programs. Referring to the study Muzindutsi and Viljoen (2016), it demonstrates that socio-demographic factors influence the participation of leisure activities among pre-graduate students at the University of South Africa. Meanwhile, through literature reviews, (Nur Aishah Hamizah, 2014) found that based on TPB applications, the key factors affecting youth participation were divided into two categories namely external factors and internal factors including motivation, lack of time, activity or programs organizer and demographic characteristics. Therefore, based on some previous studies, it can be concluded that there is an association between the variables of demographic characteristics and participation in an activity.
According to Muhammad F. A. G. et al. (2013), each school that have different streams does not have the same culture. Thus, different educational backgrounds produce different behaviour. Saha (2002) stated that if a society of different backgrounds has similar behaviour, certainly the contributing factor to the behaviour is the same. Similarly, when they have different behaviour, the contributing factors to the behaviour are different. Therefore, the education is given early as in primary and secondary schools by emphasizing on more religious education, which might help develop the noble personality as what was concluded by Ibn Miskawayh (1970) in which the education is a tradition and becomes a habit. Welk (1999) explained that demographic factors such as gender, age, race and socio-economic will affect the way certain individual absorb the various influences of behaviour. Rose-Krasnor (2009) stated the influence of moderators (e.g. gender, academic level, residence location, campus culture) affect the relationship between sports participation and academic achievement. Thus, this study expects that the selection of religious schools can contribute to the effect of the relationship between the determining factors and the participation of Muslim youth in spiritual activities.
The religious secondary school is defined as any educational institution offering Arabic language studies. It can be classified into five types based on its administrative system namely (Utusan Online, 2007) There are various factors can have affected Malaysian youths to participate in a program or activity. However, based on the research theory and literature review, this study has found some key factors that have a high impact in influencing the participation of Muslim youth in the spirituality development program namely attitudes, environment influences, perceived behavioural control, appreciation of religious, spirituality practice and demographic characteristics. It is also appropriate and important to identify the effect of religious school on the relationship between the determinants and participation in the spiritual activities among Malaysian Muslim youth.

Methodology
This quantitative research was performed using a survey method through questionnaires. The total of 623 samples was selected in this study using technique of the proportional cluster random sampling from final year undergraduates aged between 21-24 years old at the selected Malaysia Public University. The collected data were analysed using hierarchical regression analysis to achieve the research objectives. The questionnaire comprised two sections which are related to the demographic profile of respondents and 60 close-ended questions adapted from previous literature. The conceptual framework was adopted and modified from the Theory of Planned Behaviour as demonstrated in Figure 1. Muslim youth participation in the spiritual activity served as dependent variables whereas attitudes, environmental influences, perceived behavioural control, appreciation of religion, spiritual practices and demographic characteristicsserved as independent variables, while religious school acts as a moderator variable.

Respondent Profile
Tables 1 and 2 showed the diversity of respondents' demographic backgrounds representing Muslim youths in the Public University of Malaysia in terms of gender, age, residence location, family income status, type and stream of secondary schools, zone in public university, types of program and residence in public university. As shown in Table 1, female contributed 66.5% of the respondents and 33.5% were males. In terms of age, 47.7% of respondents were aged between 21 to 22 years old. The rest were between 23 to 24 years old consist of 52.3%. Residence location of the respondents shows 52.2% of the respondents live in urban area and the rest live in a rural area which consists of 47.8%. The family profile found that 16.7% of the respondents' family income level is less than RM1000 per month, 37.4% earn RM1001 to RM3000 per month, 30.7% earn RM3001 to RM5000 and 15.2% earn more than RM5001 per month. Next, Table 2   Regarding the respondents' education at the secondary level, Table 2 reported that more than half of respondents that are 63.6% received education from the National Secondary School. Then, 18.9% of the respondents are from the religious schools and followed by the respondents from the boarding school of 10.9%. In addition, the respondents from the science stream dominated which consist of 66.9% while the rest were from the accounting / economic/ trade (15.1%), religious stream (6.7%), literary (5.8%), and technical/ vocational (5.5%). The descriptive analysis in Table 2 also reported that the majority of the respondents were public university students from the east zone of 32.1% followed by the south zone of 30.5%, while the rest from the north zone (19.7%) and the central/ western zone (17.7%). In terms of field of the study, 22.5% of the respondents were from social science, 22.1% applied science, 21.7% engineering technology, 20.4% information and communication technology and 5% others. Consequently, more than half of respondents staying on campus (57.5%) and the rest live off-campus (42.5%).

Findings
Hierarchical multiple regression analysis was employed to find the impact of the religious school on the relationship between attitudes, environmental influences, perceived behavioural control, appreciation of religion, spirituality practices and demographic characteristics(i.e. age, rural residence location and stay on a university campus) with participation in the spiritual activity (Table 3).
As presented in Table 3, Model 1 is a testing of all independent variables on the dependent variable. The result of the analysis through Model 1 shows that seven independent variables (attitudes, environmental influences, perceived behavioural control, appreciation of religion, age, rural residence location and staying in university campus) have significantly positive influence the participation of Muslim youth in the spiritual activities. After the moderator variables (religious schools) were included, the results of the analysis in Model 2 shows that the value of R 2 had increased by 0.006 to 0.623. It explains that 62.3 per cent change in the variable of activity participation is due to a change in the combination of independent variables and moderator variable (religious schools). In addition, Model 2 also indicate that religious school has a significantly positive direct relationship to participation (B = 0.112). On top of that, Model 3 shows the interaction effect between the independent variables and moderator variable as illustrated in Table 3. The results of the analysis in Model 3 also show an increase in the R 2 value by 0.006 to 0.630 with the inclusion of eight interaction terms (8 independent variables X 1 moderator variables). It is explained that 63 per cent of changes occurring in the participation variables is due to changes in all interaction terms in combination and moderator variable. Based on the analysis of hierarchical regression in Model 3, it shows that only one coefficient of the interaction terms has a significant relationship to participation activities. The religious schools were found significantly moderate the relationship between spiritual practices and activity participation. With the presence of a religious school factor, the factor of spirituality practices affects the participation of the activity significantly and positively with the value of B equals 0.013. It explains the factor of spiritual practices not influencing the participation of activities (Model 1) directly, but the presence of moderator factor has changed the relationship to be significantly positive. This means a higher spirituality practice of Muslim youth with a religious schools background at the secondary level will increase their participation in spiritual activities. Meanwhile, the presence of interactions between independent variables and religious schools through Model 3 also shows that there is no moderation effect on the relationship between other independent variables (attitudes, environmental influences, perceived behavioural control, appreciation of religion, age, rural residence location and staying in university campus) with participation.
The findings of this study were found to be parallel with previous studies (Lim and Kalsom, 2010;Mota and Esculcas, 2002;Rose-Krasnor, 2009) which proved that moderator factors such as demographics give effect on the relationship between participation and determining factors. Thus, religious schools should be given special attention to increasing participation in spiritual activities in order to produce Muslim youths who have a strong Islamic identity. This discovery is one of the academic contributions of study that prove empirically that religious schools moderate the relationship between spiritual practices and the participation of Muslim youth in spiritual activities.

Discussion
Based on the findings of this study, it can be concluded that Muslim youths who have religious school backgrounds can be a factor of moderation between spiritual practices and participation in spiritual activity. This means that spirituality practices for Muslim youths in this study affect participation in the spiritual activity if they are from the religious schools. This is because religious and spirituality programs have become routine activities for students in religious schools. In fact, according to Zulaiha et al. (2016), there are several differences in religious schools with regular daily schools (SMK) in several aspects such as the subjects offered, the implementation of religious and moral education in schools and spiritual activities.
The obvious difference between types of school is from the point of their spiritual activity. Generally, the spiritual activity at SMK depends on the school administration, but basically, the activities are carried out by the Islamic Religious Association which is conducted in co-curriculum activities for two hours a week. In addition, the spiritual activity in conjunction with the Islamic greatness day is also held such as Maulidur Rasul, Ihya Ramadhan, and others. Several schools also conduct additional spiritual activities such as lectures, worship camps, solat hajat, motivation and others that are not periodic. Religious schools have activities similar to SMK but these schools oblige the congregational prayers, tadarus and qiamullail together. More ustaz and ustazah handle this spirituality program than SMK. Some religious schools provide a mentor-mentee system that runs regular meetings, hold religious talks regularly and offer religious camps frequently. Therefore, this study suggests that MOE provides an education module that emphasizes the spirituality element in the education system in both primary and secondary schools to enhance the level of spirituality in self-esteem. This is because the application of spirituality elements in education not only gives a positive impact on the students but also to teachers. Suggestions for spirituality elements to be applied in the school curriculum have also been proposed by western researchers such as Buchanan (2009) and Revell (2008) in Boston and Chicago. When the spirituality element is embedded within it, then it can prevent the symptoms of moral collapse among the student because the higher spirituality elements can build a strong identity and noble personality.

Conclusion
In conclusion, the Islamic identity of the youths cannot grow by itself. Efforts must be made by various parties to enhance and maintain the identity of Islam. This effort is considered to be one of the forms of jihad and da'wah to the youths. Hence, improving participation in the spiritual activity is crucial in creating a perfect Muslim identity. In fact, organizing the spiritual activity should be intensified as well as ensuring that the activity implemented can attract the youth interest and stimulate them to continue to join the implemented program. By providing these spiritual activities, noble values such as patience, gratefulness, remorse, cooperation, appreciation, courtesy and glory can be nurtured. Intelligent youths who expected to produce are strong and steadfast in their faith against all lust and have great spirituality practices. Youth participation in the spiritual activities will make them 'istiqamah' (consistency) in the 'congregation' and will make them able to keep the limitation of religion and succeed in the world and the hereafter.