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Jacqualyn Correro
Dr. Watt
SOCI 4308
April 17, 2016
The Beginning

Introduction

The topic I am going to research is gun ownership and how political party affiliation,
religion and income play a role in ones ownership of a gun. I have interest in studying this
specific topic because with the presidential election happening right now, there is a lot of
controversy on the topic of these certain topics. I want to research and see if there is a correlation
between these variables and to better understand the data behind individuals that own a gun vs.
individuals who do not own a gun and why. I will be analyzing the data from the General Social
Survey.

Literature Review

Politics, gun control, religion, and income are all hot topics in today's society. Do people
who own guns have low income? Do people who vote democrat have a gun in the home? Does a
person's income have an effect on their political party affiliation? The reasoning behind these
concepts and opinions is what fuels my desire to find a correlation between them. According to
many studies, research, and data, there is interesting findings as to who and why these things
correlate.

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When it comes to Politics, there are many reasons as to why people do and do not vote,
and why they affiliate with which party. Income and religion are factors that affect the polling
booths. Some people may not have access to polling booths, while some may not believe in the
act of voting. In a study done by Bruno S. Frey, he suggests the higher income population is
more affiliated and has more participation within politics, yet at the same time they have a higher
opportunity cost, and therefore would participate in politics less. He also suggests that values
have a bit to do with the higher income populations participation in politics, which are learned
during childhood. The productivity outweighs the cost of voting, in such, causing the higher
income population to vote and participate more often. Higher paying jobs also have a factor in
politics because they offer employees to be more exposed to the knowledge and facts and people
in manual work tend to not have as much contact with it or cannot formulate it as easily. The
same outcome goes for churches, people who attend church often hear about politics and talk to
other people about what you may have missed (Denver and J.M. Bochel). This suggests that
people who are often at home or have more hands on jobs with less contact to others may have
an effect on how someone votes or if they even vote.
When it comes to politics, another factor that affects whether a person votes democrat or
republican is religion. A basic theory of politics is democrats are liberal and republicans are
conservative. A Lot of people's support of a candidate's policies is based on a person's own
personal view set, which is often based upon religion. The low voting participation among lower
class and working class has a lot to do with the fact that there is no religious political tradition in
politics. Since the 80s religious affiliations have been moving toward the conservative party, but
why? In 2000 during the Bush election, more and often than not church goers and religious
people were focused on Bush, and the non-church goers were focused on Al Gore. Voting has

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been more about values than policies, and that is a big separation in politics for the two running
parties. William Schneider suggests that values unite the country. After decades of cultural
conflict, values seem to be a source of deep division in American Politics. Conservative voting
seemed to pop up more often in frequent church goers than in non-religious affiliates. Church
goers and religious affiliates, after being regrouped in the data, still seem to vote alike compared
to the non-church goers and religious groups (Denver and J.M. Bochel), religious people are
going to vote less for political reasons and more for the values that are instilled within them. The
main policies that conservatives focus on when voting are those such abortion and the person's
moral code. For example, the turn off of Clinton to the conservatives during his presidency and
then after, was the fact that to them, his morals reflected his politics from the Monica Lewinsky
scandal. The liberal vote was as well outraged but believed it had nothing to do with the
presidency; it was personal matters. They knew he still had the capability of doing the job.
Being religious or nonreligious and gun ownership also go hand-in-hand. Though Gun
ownership may be more related to culture and socialization such as immigration. Prior to the
nineteenth century, which brought over the skill of hunting and the need for a gun. This view has
followed the same pattern into the 21 st century. Most of the south is crawling with people who
hunt for sport, fun and do it for a living. Other immigrants that came later settled into cities and
most likely had no need for a gun. The less land means less places and reasons to hunt. Most
rural areas and the south are going to be more religious and have more guns. The length of time
also accounts for factors between religion and gun ownership. That being the grandfather effect.
According to Robert L. Young, the correlation between religious faith and gun ownership is an
indirect manifestation of the religious heritage. The immigrants who settled in the south carried

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a form of religion with them and since then it has trickled down, which affects whether a person
has a gun in the home or not.
Big churches and big paychecks are reflections of a higher social status. What about the
little churches, and little paychecks? Income seems to vary among the religious folks. Galen L.
Grockel believes that when it comes to religion and income, some religious bodies can have
higher incomes, while other religious bodies have lower incomes. Some factors that because this
is suggested to be education or a lack thereof. The data suggest that the separation may be due to
areal distribution and not religion. A better explanation of this correlation can be the fact that
people that attend church more often is linked to higher economic status, and that reflects on the
church and surrounding area, causing a higher income individual or family to attend a bigger
church (Denver and J.M. Bochel).
GAPS in the literature
Like in many studies there are always biases and things within literature that are missed.
The main concern within the literature is that several gaps occurred. Starting with the GSS data
set, it is very large and has many variables to choose from yet the broadness of the variables is
also a weakness. The literature found does not represent current data but the GSS allows for
more recent data.
The analysis done by J.M. Bochel and D.T. Denver had many gaps causing red flags
about the results. The research is a British study that was not done in America. There is a small
unrepresentative sample size because they only used certain religions and only certain churches.
They should have used several more churches with different diversities and a better non-religious
sample of people. The outcome of the study was very unproportioned for the different churches
they used. They also discussed troubles with the coding of certain variable. There were response

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biases because the ones that cannot attend church due to work, health, or old age may have
answered differently because they do not attend church on a regular basis. There is also a chance
of social desirability biases because the people whom he is talking to would most likely give
socially acceptable answers to fit into the group they are around. The last thing is the
independent variable used was religion and that should be a controlling factor. I will be using
two variables, combining religion, not church attendance to get a better representation and less
skewed data. An article done by William Schneider is a journalist entry related to politics. The
data that supported his view showed biased opinion due to his own beliefs. This could have
skewed the findings. I will do an analysis between religious affiliation and ones political
affiliation to better back up the reports from this research.
The regression analysis done by Galen L. Gockel focuses on only specific religions.
Factors that may also affect income is the region a person lives. Which is also affected by
education and is only briefly discussed. I am looking at religion as a whole and most studies
break them down into different religions or only have data on one. This analysis was a
convenience study because they sent out surveys to only men ran households that are fully
employed and the GSS data set will be a better way to code this variable in the way I want with
more recent data, considering this study was done in 1962 and the GSS is until 2014.
The community study by Bruno Frey had no way of showing conceptualization or
operationalization. The variables are first seen on the data without explanation on how these
people were coded and grouped. I will be explaining how I recoded and grouped the variables
that I did. An analysis needs to be done that is methodologically stronger than those variables
within the article.

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Robert L. Young had a great internal and external validity by using data from the NORC
General Social Survey though I will be using different set of data. His sample was large and his
variables captured the interest of the study. He concluded that other factors may affect the results
he received, but I will not be looking at the same factors as Region and people who hunt. Though
he only focuses on one set religion, so I am grouping religious affiliation together. Another gap
within his study is his response rate; we do not know the amount of respondents that actually
sent back the survey, that too raises concern.
My study will contribute a better representation of the correlation between political party,
income, religion and gun ownership and hopefully fuel the fire for further research
H1: Gun ownership is related to Income
H2: Religion is related to political party affiliation
H3: Gun ownership is related to income
H4: Party affiliation is related to income
H5: religion is related to income
Proposed Research Design
I propose to get a better look at the relationship between my variables and to fill in the
gaps by doing an analysis of secondary data using the GSS 2010. The GSS is a large nationally
representative in person survey done by the National Opinion Research Center on the attitudes,
behaviors and background characteristics of the American Population with a sample size of
2,044.

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I will test my hypothesis by running bivariate analysis, a chi square and a t-test. I recoded
each variable to reflect the type of information I needed. I left income alone, Which of these
groups did your total family income, from all sources, fall last year before taxes? I took out the
missing cases within each variable. The income ranged from below $1000 - over $150,000. The
religion variable, Do you consider yourself a religious person, if so to what extent? I recoded
into religious and nonreligious to include different religions into one category. The Political view
variable, Do you see yourself as liberal or conservative? I recoded into Liberal and Democrat
and the gun ownership variable Do you have a gun in the home? I recoded into people that
own a gun and people that do not.
Results
Bivariate tables

Valid

Missing
Total

Under $1,000-$9,999
$10,000-$19,999
$20,000-$29,999
$30,000-$39,999
$40,000-$49,999
$50,000-$59,999
$60,000-$74,999
$75,000-$89,999
$90,000-$109,999
$110,000-$129,999
$130,000-$149,999
$150,000 or over
Total
System

Income
Frequency
1096
1482
1440
1256
1009
942
1118
865
731
473
310
802
11524
48075
59599

Percent
108
2.5
2.4
2.1
1.7
1.6
1.9
1.5
1.2
.8
.5
1.3
19.3
80.7
100.0

Once income gets larger the groupings become bigger, this might cause problems when
running tests. What interests me is the fact that there are so many people in the groupings of

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income under $10,000. This may not be a good representative sample of the wealthier
population.

Valid
Missing

Religious
Not
Total
System

Total

Religious
Frequency
10644
2255
12899
46700
59599

Percent
17.9
3.8
21.6
78.4
100.0

People who are religious are almost double the non-religious respondents, and this can
have a bad outcome on my results. The percent of religious people is also outrageously larger
than the non-religious people.

Valid
Missing
Total

yes
No
Total
System

Gun in home
Frequency
14529
21272
35801
23798
59599

Percent
24.4
.35.7
60.1
39.9
100.0

There are quite a few more residents who do not own a gun than those who do. This
should not cause any problems when analyzing my data.

Valid
Missing
Total

Political Party
Frequency
liberal
13754
Conservative
17088
Total
30842
System
28757
59599

Percent
23.1
28.7
51.7
48.3
100.0

There are more conservatives than liberals but this should not affect my data.

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Univariate
T-test for gun in home and income

Total
income

Gun in
home
yes

MEAN

Std

Sig

2241

6.4547

3.13446

.000

no

4428

5.0483

3.27939

.000

I did an independent sample T-Test because I have a nominal and an ordinal variable.
There is a statistically significant difference between income and gun ownership because my sig
is .000 which is less than or equal to 0.05.
T-test for political party and income

Total
income

Political
party
liberal

MEAN

Std

Sig

3176

5.5072

3.30630

.000

conservative 3714

5.9720

3.32992

.000

I did an independent sample T-Test because I have a nominal and an ordinal variable.
There is a statistically significant difference between income and political party affiliation
because my sig is 0.000 which is less than or equal to 0.05.
T-test for religion and income
Total
income

religious
religious

N
8322

MEAN
5.4056

Std
3.21531

Sig
.000

not

1858

5.9629

3.48954

.000

I did an independent sample T-Test because I have a nominal and an ordinal variable.
There is a statistically significant difference between income and being religious because my sig

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is 0.000 which is less than or equal to 0.05. Here I would run a multivariate analysis for further
testing because it would improve my study and show if there is another factor that is controlling.

Chi-square for gun in home and religious

Religious
Religious
Gun in home

Yes

No
Total

Not

Total

Count

2377

420

2797

% within
religious

34.4%

28.7%

33.4%

Count

4523

1045

5568

%within
religious

65.6%

71.3%

66.6%

Count

6900

1465

8365

% within
religious

100.0%

100.0%

100.0%

I did a chi square test because I have 2 nominal variables, religion and gun ownership.
There shows to be a substantive significant difference between having a gun in the home and
being religious. The percent are over double the difference and is such a large significance. My
Pearsons chi square is 0.000 which is less than or equal to 0.05 shows a statistically significant
difference. People who are religious are more likely to own a gun than those who are not
religious by almost half as much.

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Chi-square for religious and political party

Political party
liberal
Religion

Religious

Not
Total

Conservative

Total

Count

2921

5159

8080

% within
political
party

32.1%

47.1%

40.3%

Count

6188

5798

11986

%within
political
party

67.9%

52.9%

59.7%

Count

9109

10957

20066

% within
political
party

100.0%

100.0%

100.0%

I did a chi square test because I have 2 nominal variables, religion and political party
affiliation. There shows to be a statistically significant difference between one's political party
affiliation and being religious. My Pearsons Chi Square is 0.000 which is less than or equal to
0.05 which shows a statistically significant difference. Gun owners are more likely to be
conservative than those who do not own guns.
Conclusion
The separation of politics, the controversy of religion, the stigma of owning a gun, and
the social class that income puts a person in are all important issues. With that being said, this
paper was to further see how each correlate to each other. Even with the large data set, there

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were variables that were not exactly what I was looking for. Once I recoded certain variables, I
then had a sample size that was almost double what I was testing it against. That causes there to
be skewed results, but I was able to still show a correlation within my variables. There needs to
be further research as to why there is a correlation with regards to other factors that may affect
the correlation, such as education having an effect on income, which then has an effect on
religion or one's political view. Income and religion may be a spurious correlation because my
results are not strong enough to support my hypotheses. There was not much literature on this
correlation and therefore needs to be further research and data as to why my results showed a
correlation. Throughout this paper, I learned a lot about methodology and how to better read
results from data sets. This project will allow me to interpret statistical findings through the rest
of my career in sociology, and it has sparked a big interest in trying to find other correlations is
many other aspects of life.

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References
Bochel, J. M. and D. T. Denver. 1970. "RELIGION AND VOTING: A CRITICAL REVIEW AND
A NEW ANALYSIS." Political Studies 18(2):205-219
Frey, Bruno S. 1971. "Why do High Income People Participate More in Politics?" Public
Choice 11:101-105
Gockel, Galen L. 1969. "INCOME AND RELIGIOUS AFFILIATION: A REGRESSION
ANALYSIS." American Journal of Sociology 74(6):632-647, COMMENT, 647-648, MR
Schneider, William. 2003. "American Religion and Political Polarities." The American
Sociologist 34(1-2):81-84
Young, Robert L. 1989. "The Protestant Heritage and the Spirit of Gun Ownership."
Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 28(3):300-309