Volu m e I - Purdue University Calumet

crosstab also supports the claim that individuals with less schooling are more likely to be in opposition to
gay marriage. With 68.9% stating the right to marriage should not be extended to homosexuals and only
27.5% showing support, those respondents not holding a high school degree are the most likely to be in
opposition. While individuals obtaining a high school diploma show slightly less objection towards samesex
marriage (35.3% support, 62.9% opposed), it should be understood that completing high school does
not liberalize an individual in the same manner as a college or graduate degree, which drastically appears to
positively boost one’s level of tolerance.
While the output from crosstabs is very useful in exploring the association between education and
attitudes towards gay marriage, it does not adequately explain the strength of the association on a numerical
scale and will not allow plausible scientific inferences about the relationship to be made. The gamma
output table for association strength will do just that (Table D). The general guideline for interpreting the
strength of association between two variables is the closer from 0 to 1 the gamma output value is, the
stronger the association. Positive or negative values from 0.01 to .09 are weak values of association. Plus
or minus values between .10 and .29 present a moderate existing relationship, while any value, negative or
positive above .30 is a strong, meaningful association between two variables (Babbie, Halley, & Zaino,
2007) The output from this gamma table reveals that the relationship between the two variables is strong,
with a positive value of .380. Thus, knowing a person’s level of education would improve the estimation of
support for same-sex marriage by 38%, an important finding depicting a very interesting relationship.
Is it real? More specifically, are the findings significant? Does this association carry over to the
much larger adult U.S. population? To answer these important questions, a chi-square test was
administered. The chi-square output (Table E) displays a p value less than 0.05, at 0.00, revealing that the
observed gamma relationship was not the result of an error on the part of the GSS survey, but a significant
reflection of an overall, genuine pattern across the entire nation (Hinton & Brownlow, 2004).
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