Challis Finn

4th Period

Project 1: Sexual Orientation

My group was given the topic of sexual orientation to research. We were provided with
two separate surveys. Both surveys contained a biography of a hypothetical candidate running
for the U.S. senate for the state of Utah. Both surveys were exactly the same except one of them
had a couple of slightly different details-- he was gay. The man in the first survey had a wife and
the man in the second survey had a partner and was a volunteer organizer for the Salt Lake City
Gay Pride Parade.
Our basic research question which we hoped to be able to answer was whether or not the
people of Salt Lake City would give different answers on these surveys based on the candidates
sexual orientation. After the person read the biography, they would then answer strongly agree,
agree, neutral, disagree or strongly disagree to these five basic questions along with giving us
their name, gender, and religion: 1. He has sufficient education to be a US senator from Utah. 2.
He has sufficient work experience to be a U.S. senator from Utah. 3. He demonstrates strong
leadership skills. 4. He has the kinds of life experiences to help him understand average Utahns.
5. I support more of his policy positions than I oppose.
We worked to answer our questions of whether sexual orientation sways these answers
for people in Salt Lake City by handing out these surveys in different places so that we could get
a decent variety of people. Some members of our groups took the surveys to the mall, gave them
to their parents to take to work, etc. Once we were successful in handing out the surveys, we
would review the results. My group created a google docs folder, that way we could all look over
each of the other group members survey results. We could then decide the answer to our
question and if we think there were any major differences in answers between the straight
candidate and the gay one.

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4th Period

My hypothesis from the beginning of this assignment was that the gay candidate would
receive more negative answers than the straight candidate. My reasons for expecting these results
are because we live in Salt Lake City. I believe that this city is a more religious city that tends to
turn down people who arent just like us. I figured that as soon as people saw that he was not a
heterosexual, they would begin to look for reasons and excuses not to give him a chance at being
a good candidate for our state. Whether this happens consciously or subconsciously I am not
sure, but it probably happens nonetheless.
It is important that we are aware of these biases because we need to think about if these
things are something that should actually change our vote when deciding on a potential
candidate. We should take a second and think, Why am I so against this person? Is it because of
their views and leadership skills or is it because of some of their beliefs that I dont agree with
completely? I think it is important that we take these things into consideration because we
might be automatically ruling out leaders who could be really good for us and our state just
because of their orientation, something that really does not change that much about them as a
person and a candidate.

The questions in our survey, as I already stated them before, cause the surveyor to reflect
upon whether they think this candidate would be a good one to run for the U.S. senate from
Utah. We did not add any extra questions to the bottom of our survey because we didnt think
there would be anything extra that would be important to ask about the hypothetical candidate.
We figured that the questions that were already provided would be sufficient enough to give us
the answers that we were searching for.

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4th Period

The results of our surveys did not appear as I thought they would. I thought that there
would be a lot less agreeing with the candidate who is gay, but there seemed to be a fairly even
spread between the two of them. 14.4% of people who answered the life partner survey questions
strongly agreed with the questions. (Which were all positive questions, so the answers agree or
strongly agree are good for the candidate.) 44% of them agreed, 28.8% of them were neutral
towards the question asked about the life partnered candidate, 12% of them disagreed, and .8%
of them strongly disagreed. The results for the married candidate were slightly different, but
quite similar. 19.8% strongly agreed, 51% agreed, 16.7% were neutral, and 12.5% disagreed.
And there were no strongly disagreeing answers.
This data shows that there were more strongly agrees and agrees for the married
candidate and far more neutrals for the life partnered candidate. However the proportion of
disagrees between each of the candidates was almost exactly the same. The proportion of
strongly disagree was also very similar, considering there was a very small amount of them on
the life partnered candidate and none of them for the married candidate.
Obviously my hypothesis was not completely correct, because there are not a lot of
negative answers for the gay candidate. However, there are a lot of neutral answers and I am not
completely sure what that means. Either people felt uncomfortable admitting that they would not
want a gay senator representing the state of Utah, or they just really were indifferent. It is hard to
say with this kind of sampling procedure considering we could have set it up a bit differently in
order to avoid certain variables but even then it would be difficult to say what exactly caused the
differing answers for the two candidates. We also made some mistakes in our group with our
procedure, because not all of us were on the same page of what to do. Some of us gave the
surveyors a copy of both surveys and asked the people to complete both of them. When this

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4th Period

happened, people were able to catch on to what exactly we were testing so that may or may not
have swayed their answers. Then the other people in our group did it the intended way, which
was to give only one survey out randomly so that the people did not necessarily catch on to what
we were testing. I also think some people in our group asked people they were close to like
friends and family to fill out the surveys which also may have changed some of our data.
In conclusion, we have found that there is clearly a bit of a difference in the likeliness of
people in Salt Lake City to vote for a candidate depending on their sexual orientation. This is a
little disappointing to me because I dont think that we do it on purpose. I think deep inside us
we are all judgemental and it can be difficult to get ahold of and control that judgement. But it is
important that we all try to master that because it is not right to have a certain opinion about
someone just because of the way that they have chosen to live their lives. If we choose not to
vote for someone just because they are gay, we might be missing out on some opportunities that
we might not necessarily be aware of. This candidate could have really done some good things
for us, but we arent willing to vote them in just because we are afraid of them and their
differences.
If I were to make any suggestions for further research on this topic, I would make just a
few minor adjustments to what we did in this project and repeat it. I would make sure that
everyone is on the same page of how the surveys should be handed out. (Only give one survey to
each person rather than both of them to everyone.) Then I would try to make the sample as
random as possible. Perhaps by using some sort of list of all the addresses in each city in the Salt
Lake valley, and randomly select a certain amount of addresses from each city. Then I would go
to each of these randomly selected homes and offer them one of the surveys, also randomly
selected. After collecting enough data, I think we would be able to have a better idea of what

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4th Period

proportion of people would say strongly agree, agree, neutral, disagree, and strongly disagree.
Aside from handing out surveys, you could also do some research on past elections and selected
candidates in the past. You may want to know how many homosexuals have ran for office and
how many of them got voted in. If you know a bit about past results, it would very likely give
you an idea of what we are still like today and what we will continue to be like in the future
when it comes to voting people into office and the likeliness of a gay person to get voted in.
If I could take something away from this project, it would be to be more consciously
aware of my judgements towards people in life in general, but also when I am voting for a
potential candidate. I will try my best to vote for or against someone because of the differences
they plan to make while in office rather than by the way that they have decided to live their
personal lives, which isnt any of my business anyways.