Hayden Jensen

Mr. Jeff Ferlo

Political Science 1100
19 February 2016
Overview:
I was actually very interested and excited to get the topic of sexual
orientation, particularly because of the location that we live in and the high
population of religious (Dominantly LDS and other types of Christianity)
people in Salt Lake. With the Supreme Court legalizing homosexual marriage
across the country, many people have developed strong opinions whether for
or against the cause. With the very big religious presence in Utah, there are
many who oppose but also many of those who support. We have a
reputation, whether good or bad, of going towards the moral side of laws
and other situations. Our basic research question was to figure out if the
average resident of Utah lets homosexual marriage change their ideas on a
possible future politician. If I was to put this into a formed question, it would
be, Do residents of Utah let sexual orientation influence their decisions on
who they vote for politically? Because this question is not very black and
white I think it was good to have questions that have many options to give
rather than a black and white agree or disagree. This also gives a much
wider range of data to base it off of to see someones actual opinion whether
it is neutral, or extreme in either way. One smart thing to look at in order to

see potential reasons for certain opinions is religious affiliation. Particularly in

Utah, there is potential for a religious influence to come out in people taking
the surveys since there is such a dense population of those who belong to
the LDS faith. Even those who do not belong to the faith may even feel
influenced knowing that their neighbors or colleagues may be against
homosexual marriage. I think this is a big factor that helps answer the
question if the average resident of Utah lets sexual orientation influence
their decisions in politics.
Hypothesis:
Originally I began to think that there would be a strong curve to the
more conservative side of the issue and disagree with most of what the life
partner candidate had to offer. One thing I found to help support this
hypothesis is that the LDS church donated $189,903.58 of their funds in
order to support Proposition 8, a campaign that attempted to ban
homosexual marriage in California. After reading these numbers, I thought
the huge LDS presence in Utah would overwhelm any other opinions.
Another factor I thought would have a noticeable trend was age. A good
amount of middle-aged to elderly people generally do not express the
biggest support for the homosexual community, particularly in politics and in
the right/privilege (depending on who you talk to) of being married.
Millennials and Gen X have shown to express a good to large amount of
support for the homosexual community. Due to this general trend, I thought
that age may be a predictable factor in trying to hypothesis the results of the

surveys. As I began to talk to friends and family about the issue, I realized
that a majority of whom I talked to would not let something like that blind
their view of other aspects of the candidate. Many of who I talked to
expressed that if the candidate will do the best for the state/community, why
would it matter what their orientation was? After having these conversations
I began to realize that maybe the answer to the research question wasnt
what I assumed that it might be. It may have only been the people I had
talked to that felt the same way. This is why it was good to handout the
surveys in a random way. I have now formed my hypothesis in that it will be
a pretty even spread of answers.
It is very important politically to look at the culture, tendencies, and
other factors that may change peoples opinions. If the politicians beliefs or
agenda go against the traditions or beliefs of that culture, he/she will not be
supported or even elected. In order to predict the results of this survey,
religion, culture, or traditions need to be looked at in great detail. In other
areas, the results could change drastically just based off of those three
influences.
Methodology:
The survey began by asking gender, something that could have a big
impact on the survey-takers opinion. Females tend to have a bigger
understanding, and empathetic attitude towards groups or people like the
LGBT community. Males, possibly due to social pressure, natural human

sociology, or other factors tend to lean towards the non-empathetic, without

showing emotion type of approach. Due to both of these things I was
interested in seeing exactly if gender had a noticeable effect on peoples
opinions. The next answer the survey asked for was the age of the
participant. I thought this would be a very predictable trend considering that,
as stated before, the majority of older age people express little support
towards the LGBT community; while the majority of younger age people
express a high amount of support with the community. Having more of openstyle questions helped in possibly being able to see these potential factors in
peoples opinions. People had many more options to express the strong,
light, or neutral feelings they had through the subject. The last answer that
would have a noticeable effect on survey-takers opinions is their personal
religious affiliation. Many religions have shown discontent towards
homosexuality, most often being Christian religions. What helped in getting
Utah residents true opinions was giving them only one survey rather than
them being able to distinguish what the survey was trying to accomplish by
giving them both surveys. If we had given both of the surveys to each
person, they would have known what trend we were trying to see. Many of
those who took the survey may not want to look homophobic, or not express
their true opinions because they worry about judgement people may pass on
them. However, doing it without the survey taker knowing helped to get their
opinion on the subject without them even knowing they were.

The first question asked about whether the candidate had a sufficient
education in order to be a senator of Utah. He may not have education in
exclusively politics, but there is no denying that he knows people. The
second asked about whether he has enough work experience in order to be
senator. Considering he has worked so long as a social worker, it reestablishes that he for sure knows all types of people. The third question
asked if he shows good leadership skills. He is the director of something
considered a big deal, which he would have to have leadership skills for. The
fourth asked if the candidate had enough life experiences to understand the
average resident of Utah. Having worked as a social worker, he must have
come across all different types of people, the type of experience a senator
would need to understand the needs of Utah. The fifth question asks if they
agree with more of the policies presented than they oppose. These questions
all present opportunities to show trends in the different surveys because of
the strong data that backs up the questions on the page that describes him.
Another major factor to help in seeing potential trends was to make both of
the surveys exactly the same, except for their sexual orientation. Where I
gave out my surveys was in front of Walmart, and Costco in South Jordan,
Utah.
Results:
I thought the results of the survey came to a very interesting
conclusion. As I began to look through and collect the data of each survey, I
could not pick out any particular trend. Our surveys displayed a huge variety

of opinions and variables that could affect them. One trend that I thought
would be obvious in the results was the opinions of the LDS community. In
the beginning I thought that there would be a big trend of opinions following
the moral guidelines the LDS church has put out. To my surprise, a good
majority of the survey-takers that agreed with the life-partnered candidate
were in fact LDS. Another surprising result was that there was a good spread
of religious affiliations. There was a bigger variety of religions than I
originally hypothesized. This is why you cannot assume peoples opinions
solely based off of the group, religion, or stereotypes that they may follow.
One thing that I also noticed is that there was stereotypes of both sides.
There was the sixty year-old Christian who strongly disagrees with everything
the life-partnered senator stands for. Then there was also the 21 year old
with no religious affiliation who strongly agrees with every policy decision he
offered. With these two extreme stereotypes, there was a wide array of data
including people who were neutral. This data is important because it shows
the difficulty in predicting what people may think on any topic. There can be
predictable trends, but this surprisingly was not one.
Conclusion:
When we were assigned the survey, I thought I could easily predict
what the data would consist of, and the trends that may be seen in the data.
I was wrong in my original hypothesis. Corrected not only by the people I
talked to, but also the results of the survey. Anyone who continues research
like this, I would suggest figuring out a way to give survey-takers the option

to pick between the two candidates without making it known what you were
experimenting. In closing, I would suggest that anyone should not assume
what opinions may be. You may make an educated guess, but do not
assume.