Changes in Political Attitudes by Socio-Religious Groupings

Abstract

Studies demonstrating changes in behavior from one specified period in to another have formed the bases of research advances in nearly every science except sociology. But in recent years, studies of certain political issues at two relatively distant periods have been made and are now becoming generally available to add a new dimen sion to theory and research. Roper polls are becoming generally available through the Williamstown Center, and the Survey Research Center's election studies are available through the Consortium for Political Research. Although, as strongly argued by Kerlinger,1 because people are not randomly assigned to experimental and central groups, we apparently should not think of comparisons of data over time as providing true experiments, extrapolations from such data should certainly give us a basis for checking hypothesized changes in social organization and their effects. As such, they should provide a perhaps critical body of research findings to link to process-type model building. No one need remind us that these data lack the precise controls of the natural, physical, and bio-chemical sciences. But, they do provide needed corrective and new input for sociological consideration. In order to use these studies effectively, even beyond the methodo logical questions of the multiplicity of changing control variables and comparable operational definitions, a major challenge is to specify precisely what is changing and what is the theoretical process model to clarify linkages in these changes. The model must specify the major parameters within which change is expected, and because our research methodology is still somewhat gross, the model must be relatively simple. Still, by analogy to medical research, the model must provide the basic features?the heart, lungs, arteries, corpuscles, hormones, and so forth?within which the change is to occur. The model for the present research takes the lead suggested by Professor Lenski in The Religious Factor. He points out that the four basic religious groups in the United States (Protestant, Catholic, Jew, and Negro Protestant? we might add Seculars to this list) are not merely religious institu ai