They are often tarnished with labels like "self-absorbed" and "materialistic." But young adults are actively engaged with spiritual questions, two new surveys suggest, even if they are not necessarily exploring them through traditional religious practice.

One of the surveys, of more than 100,000 freshmen who started college last fall, found four in five reporting an interest in spirituality, with three in four searching for meaning or purpose in life, and the same fraction discussing the meaning of life with friends. The incoming freshmen also reported high expectations that their colleges would help them develop spiritually.

"The first surprise for all of us is we didn't expect the students to be in that much of a spiritual quest," said Helen Astin, professor emeritus of higher education and a senior scholar UCLA's Higher Education Research Institute, which produced the survey, to be released Wednesday. "We had focused on the materialism of students, the 'me' generation, only focusing on their jobs and the future."

Previous, smaller studies by HERI have found students' participation in formal religion fell during their college years. UCLA plans to check back in with its broader group of freshmen in a few years to see if that pattern holds, and on other questions concerning spirituality.

A separate survey of 1,325 18-25 year-olds released earlier this week by Reboot, a Jewish networking group, and several collaborating organizations, emphasizes the degree to which young people are confronting religious issues informally, through conversations and even Christian rock music rather than formal religious practice.

While 44 percent of respondents called themselves "religious," 35 percent said they are "spiritual but not religious" and 18 percent said neither.

At Roanoke College, in Salem, Va., where he has been chaplain for more than 20 years, Paul Henrickson said "spiritual but not religious" is the category in which many students put themselves these days.

"You have a lot of kinds that understand in their hearts that there is a mystery about life that is larger than they are and larger than they understand, and they would call that 'spiritual.' And they are very interested in that," Henrickson said.

But, he added, "they pursue that in private ways" and "in kind of a shotgun approach. They'll look at all kinds of things from Eastern religions to yoga to New Age stuff to the standard Christianity. But they are unlikely to have that solid commitment to a religious institution (like) church membership."

Among the 112,000 incoming students at 236 colleges responding to the UCLA survey, those exhibiting a high level of religious engagement - measured by such activities as praying, attending services and reading religious texts - were three times more like to exhibit conservative political tendencies than liberal ones on such issues as gay marriage and abortion.

But other issues defied political labels. Students with high and low levels of religious engagement reported similar views on issues such as the death penalty and affirmative action. To some extent, that likely reflects opposition of otherwise politically conservative Catholics to capital punishment, and support for affirmative action among religious blacks with generally conservative social views.

Liberal and conservative students were equally likely to exhibit high levels of charitable involvement.

"It's very difficult to put people in boxes," Astin said.

Chris Smith, a University of North Carolina sociologist who has studied religious attitudes among people under 18 and was a technical adviser to the survey, said one difficulty is that spirituality means different things to different people.

Some - like those calling themselves "spiritual but not religious" - view spirituality in opposition to traditional religious practice. Others consider it an element of their faith and practice. Mormon students, for instance, exhibited the highest levels of both religious engagement and spirituality, among other categories.

"I think one thing (the report) reflects, compared to what we found with teenagers is (college-aged students) are starting to branch out somewhat in their thinking and their exploring," Smith said. "We found very little spiritual questing and exploring among kinds in middle school and high school."