Volu m e I - Purdue University Calumet

Running frequencies on each variable provides essential building blocks that can be used to
progress into deeper stages of research on the topic you are investigating. After seeing how each variable is
broken down in their own terms of measurement and data, it is now time to see how they interact with
each other. The goal of running cross tabulations of your independent variable and dependent variable will
show the relationship that exist between the two.
Illustrated in the
graph to the right is a
representation of respondents that
attend religious service in relation
to their level of political tolerance
based on three different
measurements. The column
300
250
200
150
100
50
0
Low Medium High
Never
Sometimes
Regularly
located to left of each set represents those who are categorized in the “never attend” group; the middle bar
being those who are grouped as “sometimes” attending, and lastly the far right column of each set signifying
those who regularly attend some type of religious service. Keeping in mind my original hypothesis that the
more religious the individual, the less tolerant they are to gay rights, a relationship can be seen here that
actually contradicts that belief.
Those who never attend any religious services rank the highest in the lower end of the
tolerance spectrum out of the three groups. Comparing the respondents of the “never” and “regularly”
category, we can see that those who are regularly attending services are more tolerant to the issue than not.
As the graph continues to the right, we see the different increases and decreases in the correlation between
the two. First, following the “never” column across the three levels of tolerance, the number of
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