有關宗教皈信的現象非常複雜，以往的研究著重於宗教皈信原因的探討，宗教皈信歷程的研究則相對不受重視，其主要的研究範圍則侷限於新興宗教領域，為了進一步釐清宗教皈信歷程的各種因素，本文考察主流佛教出家人的皈信歷程。為了能夠正確理解宗教皈信的歷程，使用質性研究方法的進行蒐集資料工作，然後再使用紮根理論研究法進行分析，以建構宗教皈信歷程的理論與概念。研究發現佛教的皈信歷程大致可以區分成五個階段：一、前皈依階段、皈依階段、出家階段、後出家階段及慣化階段。每一個階段大概會存在著各人、社會及宗教等助長與抑制的因素，在助長因素強過抑制因素時，使得往下一個階段前進；在抑制因素強過助長因素時，或被拉回上一個階段，因而形成一種動態的歷程。

As a complicated phenomena, religious conversion was studied by social science interdisciplinary, such as psychology, sociology, and anthropology. The psychologist tends to focus primarily on the isolated individual who is converting. The sociologist likes to see conversion as the result of forces shaped and mobilized by social institutions and mechanisms. The anthropologist thinks that conversion is the product of culture. Because every discipline has its research tradition, it is hard to take integrative point of view to explore the processes of religious conversion. This study was designed from the holistic perspectives, which focus on cultural, social, individual, and religious system, to investigate the conversion in Buddhism. The qualitative in-depth interview will be adapted to collect data, and the data will be analyzed by the procedure of grounded theory. The preliminary model of conversion processes will be built up then.