A Post-Intentional Exploration of Agnostic College Students’ Experiences

Scholars have adapted college student identity development models to examine and highlight the unique, laborious, and varied experiences of marginalized populations. However, researchers have minimally explored the perspectives of nontheistic and nonreligious college students using poststructural methodologies. I followed a post-intentional phenomenological study design (N = 10) to explore how being agnostic or holding a worldview inclusive of agnosticism might take shape for some undergraduate students in college. Findings suggest that, while constructing their identities, students in this study moved through tentative manifestations as reflected by external to internal influences (resources and family), internal processing (identities and labels), and internal to external influences (interpersonal relations and college involvement).