Volu m e II - Purdue University Calumet

There are also few other observations that are important to recognize. In the beginning of our
research, we recognized the potential influence of religiosity as measured by church attendance and
religious preference on political tolerance. Our results show that, one's denomination affects tolerance so
that Protestants and Catholics (although in the case of Catholics the difference is not statistically significant)
are much less likely to be tolerant as compared to the baseline group (no affiliation). The dummy variable
“Attend Church Regularly” and its magnitude (-1.046) show that those who attend church regularly are
notably less tolerant than those that never attend church. Finally, it’s important to recognize that the
dummy variable “Attend Sometimes” (- .609) shows that those who attend church fairly often are still less
tolerant than the baseline value of not participating in church activities at all.
In conclusion, the hypothesis that was proposed in the beginning of this paper was confirmed,
because the results showed us that higher levels of education, lead to higher levels of political tolerance.
The second observation that we attained from our research process, is that the relationship is statistically
significant at the .000 level, and it could be generalized from the sample to the overall population.
Furthermore, it is appropriate to recall that our prediction that those who are more religious - as represented by
one's religious preference and church attendance - are more intolerant than those without a religious
denomination or who never attend religious services. The results showed us that those who attend church
sometimes and regularly are both more intolerant than those that do not attend at all. This paper focused on
general tolerance and the effect of education on the extension of procedural rights and civil liberties to
certain groups. We did not perform individual analysis on each question contained in the tolerance index,
and therefore our results do not examine the education-tolerance relationship to specific actions or groups.
However, this research provides a further insight into the effect knowledge has on tolerance and should
facilitate future studies into political tolerance.
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