WHAT DOES AMERICA THINK? 51915.2 Prayer in Schools
These are actual survey data from the General Social Survey, 2004.
The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that no state or local government may require
the reading of the Lord’s Prayer or Bible verses in public schools. What are your
views on this—do you approve or disapprove of the Court ruling?Overall, almost
37 percent of respondents approved of the ruling, while 63 percent disapproved of
the ruling. Men were more likely than women to approve of the ruling.CRITICAL THINKING|DISCUSSION QUESTION
- Why do you think men were more likely than women to approve of the ruling?
3 Go to this website to look further at the data. You can run your own statistics and crosstabs
here: http://sda.berkeley.edu/cgi-bin/hsda?harcsda+gss04
REFERENCES:Davis, James A., Tom W. Smith, and Peter V. Marsden. General Social Surveys
1972–2004: [Cumulative file] [Computer file]. 2nd ICPSR version. Chicago, IL: National Opinion Research
Center [producer], 2005; Storrs, CT: Roper Center for Public Opinion Research, University of Connecticut;
Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research; Berkeley, CA: Computer-Assisted
Survey Methods Program, University of California [distributors], 2005.