RESEARCH METHODS IN SOCIAL SCIENCE

The link between Catholicism and intolerance in the Polish society

Students (group 22): Juda Wioletta Glazik Martyna Felecan Ionut

TABLE OF CONTENTS 1. Introduction to research process 2 1.1 Theoretical reflections on intolerance 2 1.2 Institutional context 3 1.3 Methodology.. 3 2. Discourse analysis 2.1. Sampling 2.2 Theory and method of analysis.. 2.3 Analysis..... 4 4 5 5

3. Interviews 8 3.1 Different perspectives to conducting interviews 8 3.2 Interview with Pro-Life organization 9 3.3 Interview with individuals 10 3.4 Interview with Campaign against Homophobia 11 3.5 Conclusions on interviews. 12 4. Statistical analysis...13 4.1 A few theoretical aspects on quantitative research. 13 4.2 Univariate analysis 14 4.3 Bivariate analysis16 4.4 Multiple regression analysis 19 4.5 Statistical analysis conclusions...20 5. Concluding discussion..21 Appendix I IV.24

1. Introduction to the research process

The Christian religion is a cult based on very solid principles, among them being the unconditional acceptance and love for your fellow human beings, regardless of where they come from or what their status is. Nevertheless, many followers are choosing to use religiousness and its teachings as a widely accepted excuse for sometimes exaggerated attitudes towards groups of people or just situations deemed as deviant. This paper will try to analyze if religion and the Catholic Church are indeed the main promoters of intolerance in the specific case of Poland, a country which is still being perceived as one of the most conservative states in relation to acknowledging human rights. Accordingly, our guiding research question is To what extent do the religious upbringing and the Catholic Church influence the attitudes of the Polish people towards moral issues regarded as sensitive? We have chosen this subject not only based on research considerations but to some extent also on emotional ones, as two of the groups members are Polish citizens, a fact which has set-up an interesting and very authentic approach of the qualitative methods (that directly concerned exclusively Polish people and documents). 1.1 Theoretical reflections on intolerance The concept of intolerant behavior has been approached in just a small number of works concerning connections between psychology, sociology and religion, one of them being the edited book of dr. C. Batson et al., Religion and the Individual, A SocialPsychological Perspective (1993). This book boldly asks the question if religion can be perceived as a sort of mental condition that eventually restricts the subjects from going beyond certain well-established levels of reflection and understanding, quoting several psychopathologists on the way, such as Sigmund Freud or dr Albert Ellis: People largely disturb themselves by believing in absolutistic shoulds, oughts, and musts...The devoutly religious person tends to be inflexibly closed, intolerant, and unchanging. Religiosity, therefore, is in many respects equivalent to irrational thinking and emotional disturbance." (in Batson et al., 1993). Although we believe labeling religious beliefs as purely emotional deviances is a simplistic and far-fetched approached, it is worth to notice that world renowned researchers in psychology have chosen to touch this subject in the past, paving the way for potential future in-depth analysis. Other contemporary works have derived from these general notions, analyzing more thoroughly the influence of religion on attitudes towards specific phenomena, such as homosexuality. An article in the Journal of Homosexuality written by Hooghe, M. et al. (2010) comes to the conclusion that the two main factors which generate homophobic behavior in an observed group of people from Canada are gender and religion. The writers support their findings with references to similar work carried out by sociologists as Hinrichs & Rosenberg (2002) who state that individuals who are actively participating in religious services or bear strong traditional ties to a certain spiritual belief are more likely to have lower levels of tolerance compared to others. One explanation could lie directly in the religious dogma, as for example some Evangelical groups specifically base their doctrine on particular biblical prohibitions against homosexual relations (Sherkat, 2002 in M. Hooghe et al. (2010), p 395).

1.2 Institutional context: how important is the Catholic Church in Poland? Poland is well-known for being one of the most religious countries in Europe, with around 88% of its population belonging to the Catholic Church (Polish Central Statistical Office, 2009). The popularity of this institution can be explained not only by the strong traditional and ideological arguments, but also by its crucial role in the countrys political and social history from the last decades. Thus, the Catholic Church has served as the most important element in channeling peoples opposition during the Communist rule, with the visit of then Pope John Paul II (a Polish native) undoubtedly fueling the upcoming revolution. The post-communist era saw the Church making efforts in reaffirming itself as an essential actor in the civic and institutional scene, with direct involvement in primary school curriculum, legislative regulations on abortion and divorce and even monitoring rules of mass media products as the main tools of influence (Clarke, P. 2008). Most recently, the Catholic Church has found solid support from the Kaczynski brothers (who came to presidency in 2005 and 2006), whose political program is apparently based on the assumption that Catholic and national values should prevail over permissive liberalism on issues like abortion and gay rights (Rupnik, 2007 in Clarke, P. 2008). Accordingly, the Warsaw administration has found itself under constant disapproval from independent actors and organizations, with even the European Parliament taking a stance in 2007 against presumed homophobic incitation by the Polish politicians. Hence, one question that may arise at this point and is worth investigating is whether the influence of the Catholic doctrine on the peoples attitudes can be both direct (teachings, texts, priests) but also indirect (through nongovernmental organizations or legislative rules). 1.3 Methodology Because responsible researchers are advised to point out to the reader beforehand what kind of theory-building research will be utilized in the paper (George A., Bennett A, 2005), we will state that this project belongs to the theory-testing category, as the investigation assesses the validity and scope conditions of single or competing theories( Lijphart and Eckstein) cited in (George A., Bennett A, 2005), p 75). In our case the single theory which will be tested on the selected group of Polish people implies that persons who consider themselves devoutly religious are most likely to have an inflexible attitude towards specific deviant cases in the society. Furthermore, we can argue that this process will possibly trigger answers that will justify the mentioning of the heuristic point of view of the research, as new variables, hypotheses, causal mechanisms, and causal paths (George A., Bennett A, 2005) p 75) might be identified in the end, alongside certain process-tracing operations (which may allow us to answer not just the what, but also the how). The main attitudes which will be discussed and analyzed concern the issues of abortion and homosexuality in Poland. The reason for choosing these are the extensive media coverage directly linked to them (which allowed us to perform textual analyses), the existence of numerous independent organizations involved (approached in the interview part) but also their presence as variables derived from questions included in the World Value Survey (used for the statistical section).

2. Discourse analysis
In the first part of the qualitative analysis, we will try to find the answer to the question To what extent do the religious upbringing and the Catholic Church influence the attitudes of the Polish people towards abortion? Furthermore we would like to know whether religion and the Catholic Church in Poland encourage people to be intolerant. In order to get answers to these questions we have conducted a discourse analysis of two Polish articles containing two opposing positions on the problem of abortion. 2.1. Sampling The articles we have chosen as our samples represent two opposing views on the problem of abortion. The first text entitled To the detriment of women? is written by a keen supporter of abortion, Wanda Nowicka, the Executive Director of the Polish Federation for Women and Family Planning. The second text entitled According to the party guidelines is a publication written by Mariusz Dzierawski, a member of the Right to Life Foundation. As we have decided to conduct the research concerning a Polish issue, the access to the documents has been somehow limited. For these reasons we have analyzed the articles found on the official websites of the newspapers. We realize that using web sources may cause some problems such changing or disappearing from the Web (Flick U., 2006), nonetheless, we have decided to use them as they have been also available in Polish dailies. The first text by Wanda Nowicka has been published in a Polish right-wing daily Rzeczpospolita, the second one written by Mariusz Dzierawski has been available in a Polish Catholic daily Nasz Dziennik. The articles were published respectively in August 19 and August 23, 2011. The selection of the period was not random. Firstly, we wanted to present the most recent stage of the abortion debate in Poland and its reflection in the press. Secondly, the end of August 2011 was the time when the Polish Parliament was to debate a bill that would totally ban abortion in Poland. Consequently, the discussion about abortion started being very lively and soon became a very popular topic in all kind of Polish media. The scope of this project made us impossible to do a full discourse analysis however the two documents that we have chosen for our research should be as accurate as possible. For that reason, we have focused on four criteria suggested by Scott (1990 in May T., 1997 and Flick U., 2006) while selecting the right documents; that is representativeness, credibility, authenticity and meaning. Both of the articles are also credible as their authors have been interested in the problem of abortion for many years. Wanda Nowicka is a leading activist and an author of number of publications on womens sexual and reproductive health rights in Poland. In addition, she is a co-founder and executive director of the countrys Federation for Women and Family Planning, the organization that defends the right to legal and safe abortion. Mariusz Dzierawski is a member of the Committee of Legislative Initiative Stop abortion, a member of Pro Life Foundation and an organizer of the shocking antiabortion exhibitions that were held in the centers of the Polish cities. Both articles are primary documents and show genuine points of view of authors however they also show the same facts and events in entirely different ways. For us, researchers, the meaning of the articles is that they show the difference in perceiving the same problem by two opponents.

2.2. Theory and method of analysis In order to analyze the attitudes of two opponents we have decided to do a rhetoric analysis. According to Collins (in Potter J., 1996) rhetoric is one of the major concepts for understanding social life. In addition, it provides closure to controversies (Potter J., 1996) which will be valuable for analysing the attitudes of two antagonistic positions for our research. Furthermore, Billig (1991 in Potter J., 1996, p. 106) claims that there is no role for attitudes except in issues where there is conflict and dispute. In consequence, every attitude is a stance against the counter position (Billig, 1991 in Potter J., p. 106) so it should be clear that attitude holders will always justify their positions and criticize the counter position. In his book Potter (1996) calls these actions reifying and ironizing where reifying the arguments means turning something abstract into a fact and ironizing refers to undermining the arguments of opponents which can be done by using lies, delusions, mistakes, flattery, deceptions, misrepresentations (Potter J., 1996). Potter (1996) claims that rhetoric is used to bolster particular versions of the world and to protect them from criticism. He also argues that one of the features of any description is that it counters actually or potentially a range of competing alternative descriptions (Potter J., 1996, p.106). Therefore, in our project we will focus on the ways in which two antagonistic descriptions try to reify their own arguments and ironize their opponents. 2.3. Analysis The selected articles, as we have mentioned before, were published in August, 2011, just before the voting by Polish Parliament on the bill that would totally ban abortion in Poland. Hence, both texts, depending on who is the author, contain a number of good and bad points of possible enacting the bill. The aim of the articles is to win the Members of Parliament over to their side and persuade them to vote for or against the bill. Both articles have been available only in Polish language. Therefore all the quotations are effects of our own translations. We have tried to be as precise as possible while doing translations however Polish language contains more words than English and some of them have more than one meaning which is sometimes not possible to translate to English. For these reasons we have encountered a few problems which we are to describe in a later part of the analysis. While reading the texts we have noticed that the authors have different understanding of the same words. Pro-abortion supporters perception on abortion is that as long as a baby is not born it does not belong to a category human being and therefore abortion should be treated as an operation. In contrast, pro-abortion opponents assert that human life begins at conception and thus abortion should be treated as committing a murder as it kills a person. Moreover, in his article, Dzierawski, a keen opponent of abortion and a representative of people who follow the Bible, repeatedly uses words killing an innocent person, murdering a baby or taking someones life in order to emphasize the atrocity of abortion while in the article by Nowicka, a supporter of abortion, one can find such terms as stopping a pregnancy, foetus or unwanted baby.

This misunderstanding causes rather large confusion when it comes to a matter of religiousness. Both pro-abortion followers and pro-life supporters claim the right to call themselves Catholics and both sides feel offended when they are accused of being insincere. Pro-abortion supporters are being accused of murdering innocent babies while pro-life followers of killing mothers and not being compassionate towards them as a good Catholic should be. However, Dzierawski refers to a religion and its teachings several times in his articles while Nowicka seems to avoid this topic. As Potter (1996) argues one should not focus just on what is described but also what is left out. When Dzierawski accuses the pro-abortion followers that they consider themselves gods and give themselves rights to allow or forbid the right to life, Nowicka uses a very subtle way of ironization and refers to this argument. She claims that womens possibility of using the latest medical achievements should not be taken from them because of ideological and legislative reasons. We believe that she avoids the word religion and uses a term ideology instead because the religion has still a great influence on many sensitive issues in Poland and by diminishing its significance she could discourage people to her ideology. This rhetoric is one of the resources of ironizing descriptions to undermine the adequacy of a description (Potter J., 1996). Both authors use a rhetoric that plays on feelings. For instance Nowicka anticipates a large number of deaths of pregnant women in case when the bill is accepted. Furthermore she cautions the Members of Parliament that their wives, daughters or daughters-in-law can possibly be in the same situation when they get pregnant with unwanted baby and do not have possibility to abort it. This remark is done especially well because it concerns the family of the Members of Parliament. The description is used to undermine a counter position as those who vote the bill certainly do not intend to hurt their next of kin. Dzierawski uses a rhetoric that plays on feelings when he writes about abortion as killing the children or murdering innocent human beings. This is again used to undermine any counter position because certainly no one intends to kill another person especially when it is that small and innocent. In addition, Dzierawski uses a very powerful method of ironization when he compares the abortion of babies with genetic diseases to some Nazi eugenic practices. He refers to the times when Nazis killed thousands of disabled people in order to maintain a pure German race and improve the genetic composition of a population. This comparison is again used to undermine or ironize arguments for abortion by trying to make it sound so dramatically. Further on, Nowicka recalls a case of 14-years old girl who was refused to have an abortion, when invasion of the praying opponents of abortion scared doctors of one of the Warsaw hospital to such extend that they refused to do surgery despite the previous agreement on it. Nowicka claims that for that reason the young girl has gone through traumatic time. What she has not written in the article is that abortion was actually performed on the girl and as Dzierawski claims this is a factor that has caused a tragedy for a young mother because killing her baby has ruined [her] life. These two different descriptions of the same case have been constructed to seem as a factual account which is a typical rhetorical tool. It is employed here to work up the facticity of a version and make it difficult to undermine (Potter J. 1996, p. 112).

We would like to focus now on one of the sentences written by Nowicka which we have mentioned in the previous paragraph: invasion of the praying opponents of abortion This sentence is full of irony. Invasion has itself a negative meaning and according to the Cambridge Dictionary, it stands for coming to a place in an annoying and unwanted way. However praying, in spite of the fact that it brings to mind a positive connotation such as speaking to a god to express love, admiration or thanking/asking for something, in this sentence it is rather similar to a word overpray which in Polish language means constant bothering a god by praying for any trivial thing. This irony is drawn on to ironize the adequacy of a description (Potter J., 1996). The same rhetorical tool is used when Nowicka calls abortion opponents so-called protectors of life and their mission so-called protection of life. It shows that she doubts in their willingness to care for life. While comparing the two articles, we have noticed that Dzierawski tries to support and reinforce his claims more often than Nowicka whose descriptions are more often used to undermine counter positions. He for example uses statistics on number of people who are against abortion or women who had abortion after finding out that their babies have serious disease while Nowicka uses terms such as some, a few, a lot. Moreover, Dzierawski tries to reify his arguments against abortion by stressing the importance of life protection as a communitys responsibility and an ethical duty. He also writes about guaranteed bad conscious of women and men who decide on abortion in a way that it seems to be a factual account. This is a typical rhetorical tool where a description is treated so solid and unproblematic that it does not even need to be explicitly formulated to believe in its truthfulness and at the same time it is hard to be undermined (Potter J., 1996). As Agger (1991, in May T., 1997) claims a document tells us a great deal about the societies in which writers write and readers read. However, as we have mentioned before, the scope of this project does not allow us to do a full discourse analysis and therefore, the articles that we have analyzed should be seen as a part of more general discourses. However, if we are to draw any conclusions from the documents, in relation to our research questions, it will be that there has been a bitter dispute over the abortion and rights to life in Poland. The language and style of writing shows the contempt for the opponents views and even for opponents themselves. What is more, the dispute does not seem to end as both parties strongly believe in their own principles. However, it is clear that people who truly believe in God and who follow the Bible are against any interference in the youngest life as it is an exclusive Gods job. In addition, they do not tolerate any counter positions in this case because, as the Pope John Paul II says in Dzierawskis article, A democracy without values can easily turn into an open or hidden totalitarianism.

3. Interviews
In the qualitative part of our research project we decided to conduct interviews as well, generating a total of 40 minutes recorded data (later translated and transcribed) and 4 written pages of answers from individuals. The reality of disputes about abortion and homosexuality issues also refers to a crucial fact in democracy, which is tolerance. The moral issues are very complex and require deep insight to circumstances surrounding them. Theory of sociology or quantitative techniques for investigation are important, nevertheless for better understanding the topic we wanted to talk with people involved in these issues. "The abortion issue is perhaps the most contested one in the current culture war". (Hunter 1994 in Kevin J. Christiano 2002, p. 196). Therefore, due to and with the help of interviews, we are going to explore our investigation subject by understanding the bases of some organizations that deal with these moral issues, like the Pro-Life association, characterized by giving opinions and advices about family planning, contraception, protecting humanity and human rights. Furthermore, the homosexuality issue will be covered by involving Homophobia Campaign Organization and two anonymous individuals, homosexual interviewees. We decided to use a focused (unstructured) interview which has an open-ended character and provides an ability to challenge the preconceptions of the researcher (May, T. 2001, p. 124), in our case being the strong influence of religiosity. This technique enables the interviewees to answer questions within their own frame of reference, having the opportunity to talk about the issue from their own perspective, thus ultimately providing qualitative depth to the process. In the same time we as researchers have the opportunity to take advantage of the relative flexibility and discover new unplanned ideas about the topic, although in the beginning they were seemingly diverging from the concern (Bryman 1988 in May T., p.124). The person from our group responsible with carrying out the interviews is a female student, chosen because she is a native polish speaker and also considering her good communication skills. 3.1. Different perspectives to conducting interviews Before going into people's opinions and values, we were trying to understand the topic in general, getting to know opinions about the issue from different perspectives, resources and approaches (May, T. 2001 p.120). We had been studying the information posted on the organizations' websites, watching their medial performances and speeches uploaded online. Further on we were trying to prepare the in interview by talking about the subject to our friends and family members, with the purpose of getting accustomed to the matter. One problem we initially noted was that our questions might be perceived as defiant but on the other hand the nature of the topic is precisely about touching sensitive points, therefore we needed to approach different methods and strategies of conducting interviews. For instance, some of the people might not be amenable, thus we had to proceed in preparing how to avoid ambiguity and be sensitive in ethical and political context. (May, T. 2001, p. 132). A good technique which prevents being hostile or generating embarrassment is to generalize the questions, such as many people think that... do you have also an opinion about that?(May, T. 2001, p. 129).

3.2 Interview with Pro-Life organization Contemporary, the abortion issue is accompanied by loud discussions in the Polish media, as public opinions are shaped by mostly nongovernmental organizations and periodical campaigns. Accordingly, we desired to interview one of the biggest antiabortion organizations in Poland, Pro-Life, which managed in June 2011 to gather a number of 600 000 signatures that backed the total ban of abortion in the country, an initiative which was consequently just narrowly rejected in the Parliament. Our mission was to acquire some deeper insights on what kind of arguments, opinions and motivations people from the side defending the life take and to what extend they can be connected to the Catholic dogma or the Polish Church. Our primary contact was with a secretary from the organization, whom we further asked for contact details from a person both authorized and capable of providing answers, also sending an email with examples of questions. After a couple of days and several followup calls we received a negative answer, as none of her superiors liked our questions, labeling them as inappropriate. One of the explanations for this outcome might be linked to the feminist approach to the theory of interviewer, which says that there is a social power between man and woman, a kind of bias that topics introduced my women are more often rejected than by man (Fishman 1990 in T May, p. 136, 2001). The second attempt of communication with Pro-Life was more successful though, as our colleague managed to reach a different person on the telephone, as she calmly expressed our disappointment that we werent able to receive objective information from one of the biggest non-governmental agencies in Poland. We also used the argument that other human and civic rights actors were much more open to discussions, thus prompting a more liberal attitude from Mrs Katarzyna Urban, a member of the Board of Directors. Because the focused interview technique is based on cooperation and trust, we tried to start the operation carefully with descriptive and general questions, following Spradleys suggestions (in May, T. 2001, p.131). In our case the prologue took the form of mini tour questions, like asking about her particular role in the organization and the main tasks she performs. As her initial stance on the whole interview was very reserved, we decided to offer her plenty of freedom in choosing the topics course, eventually trying to deviate the questions towards what we were interested in. We were also able to test Mays (2001) theories on the willingness of women to respond more thoroughly when they are interviewed by fellow women, our colleague also applying Finchs suggestions on being a sympathetic listener (Finch in May, T p 136) in order to create a more productive atmosphere. With that goal accomplished, she decisively tried to pursue the religiosity issue, bringing up questions which would ultimately connect the Pro-Life organization to the Catholicism or the Catholic Church. Unfortunately, this strategy was not effective, as only humanistic values were mentioned as being important in the organizations doctrine, Mrs Urban also paraphrasing several ancient philosophers who deemed abortion an inhumane act. Towards the end of the interview our colleague also approached religiosity, but from a personal point of view, such as Are there any influences in your work from the catholic belief? and even are you a believer? but she refused to answer.

In connection to our research question, the conclusion of this interview is that Mrs Urban was very careful not to connect religiosity to hers or the organization's opinions and attitudes. She claimed there are a lot of different reasons and important aspects connected mostly to humanistic, philosophical and medical values which stand for defending a human and even the unborn life. Moreover, it was quite apparent she tried to make a stance when describing the Pro-Life organization as totally independent, both from a political point of view but also, whats more important, from the religious one. 3.3 Interviews with Polish individuals Our second choice for interviewing was connected to the problem of intolerance towards people with homosexual orientation. Poland is perceived as a conservative country with a mostly intolerant environment for the other sexual orientations. In the process of globalization and membership in the European Union, Poland is in the course of liberalizing its society, as gay parades or manifestations aim to change the peoples negative attitudes and to win more objective treatment for gays and lesbians, what is still met with opposition from political and Church institutions. For this reason we wanted to learn from individual respondents their perception about the level of tolerance in Poland. The decision of choosing individuals might involve the risk that collected data may omit the voices outside of the network of acquaintances. However, the choice for interviewing individuals was motivated by the fact that the subjects were young and open-minded people, known to our colleague from a joint exchange program performed in Sweden one year ago. As T. May suggests in his work, representation is a key concept when pursuing the confidence of the respondents (May, T 2001, p 130), our colleague having the advantage that she also is an international student from Poland and is in the same time capable of going beyond certain communication boundaries which usually occur in their native country, when homosexuality is mentioned. One individual comes from a small village and the other one from a big city, as the different environments of upbringing and catholic belief shaped differently their life as homosexuals. We used the specific technique of informal interview, which is known to be able to reveal the subjective basis for lasting social change in the patterns of perception and behavior of particular social groups (Segert and Zierke in May, T p.124). In our case, the particular social group is made from young homosexuals residing or born in Poland. The greater depth in research of peoples life might be achieved by using the structural questions and this way some of the ideas of the researcher can be verified. One such example was the question what kind of people the interviewee socializes with? (T May, 2001 p.136). The two individuals claimed that they were selecting the people from their entourage according to whether they want to share the truth about their own sexuality with them or not. Thus, this can show a certain level of fear of intolerance in their close social environment. In one interview there was also a radical opinion that the Catholic Church influences the attitudes of the Polish society and the political decisions, claiming that the voice of the Church is very loud and manipulative towards inhabitants and politicians of Poland.

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The unstructured format of the interview and its flexibility enabled us to use a technique of reflecting back and return to previous questions, which gives a chance for the interviewee to correct or modify his answers. (May, T 2001, p. 133) Firstly we asked if they feel that in Poland the Church has an impact on the legislative matters. Then in a different way we suggested whether we can talk about a possible inner conflict following the Catholic Church attitude towards homosexuals and their own sexual orientation. The answers showed that if the official rules assumed on political level are according to the Catholic dogma, this obviously contributes in a negative way to the manner in which the minority of homosexuals is perceived. In other words, followers of the Church are taught by the Church to treat homosexuality as something outside of norm. Furthermore, we could also relate to what Goffman argued about the chronological method of interviewing, as one side relates to internal matters such as image and identity, and the other side to official position, jural relations and style of life (in May, T., 2001, p.133). From the answers of the two individuals we could underline the idea that even if the changes in society moved towards a higher degree of tolerance, the fact is that homosexuals will still have to control their public manifestations in order to avoid an aggressive situation. The relation between self identity and official position or style of life can thus lead to inner conflicts and the feeling of guilt. In case of our second interviewee it was frustrating that intolerance towards who they are in a relationship with is strongly imposed by the Church, whose official stance is to prohibit any homosexual communion. Both of our respondents conclusions were that the religious upbringing can influence a societys attitude towards homosexuals and can limit their feeling of freedom and natural well-being. 3.4 Interview with Campaign against Homophobia organization The last interview of the series was made with Mr Greg Czarnecki, a member of the management board of Campaign against Homophobia organization which has the most resilient activists regarding homosexuals minority rights. Previous interview experiences contributed to our awareness that conversation is influenced also by the interviewer and his characteristics such as age, sex, race and accent. Simultaneously this affects the type of information we draw out (May, T. 2001, p. 128). We presented ourselves as 3 students who are conducting a project for a Swedish University about the level of tolerance in Poland towards homosexuality. We immediately felt there was no bias regarding sex or age and found the subject open to discussions. We assumed that this combination of features such as age and education would produce more thorough opinions and attitudes, likewise in the example from Mays work, where a black man is more willing to answer in front of another black man. (May, T. 2001). Moser and Kalton (in May, T. 2001, p.128) claim that one of the three conditions for successful completion of an interview is accessibility, when our respondents have access to information we are looking for and are directly involved in the topic we refer to. This approach motivated our choice of actually talking to one of the leaders of the organization, as he also seemed to be a competent dialogue partner, being used to giving interviews from his position of contact person. The man directly agreed to give an interview and allowed to be recorded. The second condition for completion of the interview is that the respondent understands what is expected from them, which in the
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case of the representatives of this organization is quite obvious. Following Tim May the last conditional thing is motivation, which demands a good cooperation between the interviewer and the person being interviewed. For these reasons we used different techniques, like asking non directive questions which allowed for wider answers or quoting something from their website and relating to last media news which concerned the organization directly. In the analysis of this conversation, an important fact is that our respondent was deeply involved in all actions of the organization and spoke in a sense of events he experienced himself. Thus, as Spradley assumed, interviewee's picture gives us a form of ethnographic analysis and better interpretation of relationship between tolerance and homosexuals experiences (in May, T. 2001, p. 139). The recorded voice also turned our attention to the way of speaking, as matters connected with church and their impact on intolerance was very much emphasized, such as Yes for sure, unfortunately! This is a very big problem. But of course we are not an organization anti-catholic. We interpret this fact by the obvious existing tension between the organizations activity and matters involved with the Church. The reaction was not connected to the theological impact of religion, but the meaning of churches as institutions, as their influence is seen everywhere: educational system, civic legislation, political opinions and in the same time imposing ways of thinking to Church followers. Moreover as Czarnecki claims, it is very hard to accept because it hampers our actions and the progress of tolerance. From this sentence we can easily understand that in the organization's opinion, probably speaking for the whole minority of homosexuals, that religion upbringing shares the blame when looking for culprits who promote intolerance in the country, alongside conservative traditions and politic decisions. 3.5 Conclusions to the interview technique To conclude, we had conducted in total four interviews, and each of them had a particular respondent and aim, contributing to our process in a different way. We received long answers and collected a lot of data to interpret, with the freedom and frankness during a conversation being the most important thing for us, significantly in the studied case of Poland, where still moral issues like homosexuality and abortion are not discussed in a very liberal way. The collected data enables us to conclude that polish society has rooted very deeply the notions of conservatism and religiousness in their attitudes. Nevertheless, the Polish society is changing and more and more people can reveal their homosexuality or cross the borders to Germany to perform an abortion, for example. However, just like in most so-called civilized modern countries, intolerant acts are very casual, with hateful labels as faggots (for the gay minority) or killers (for girls resorting to medical or medicine-induced abortion) still being heard and witnessed. Our qualitative investigations lead us to assume that intolerance is a complex problem and there is not just one explanation to it, but the way people perceive Catholicism is definitely among one of them. The two individuals and the pro-diversity organization interviewed share the same opinion that tradition, religion and the general fear of oddity are the main reasons of intolerance and actually xenophobia in Poland.

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4. Statistical analysis
In the qualitative part of our paper we have focused mainly on finding if and, to a small extent, how either religiosity or religious institution are affecting Polish societys view on certain sensitive topics. Still, in order to have a more complex and multilateral research project, we must also try to answer the question how much? of the respective attitudes can be attributed to the independent factors mentioned earlier and how strong the connection truly is? For this we will use data provided by the World Value Survey, a global database which provides variables for attitudes and beliefs concerning all the major contemporary social topics, allowing us to perform a thorough quantitative study. 4.1 A few theoretical aspects on quantitative research The quantitative research concept could be defined as explaining phenomena by collecting numerical data that are analyzed using mathematically based methods (in particular statistics). (Aliaga and Gunderson 2002) in (Muijs, Daniel, 2004, p. 1). In our case the phenomena to be explained, (identified as the connection between religious affiliation and certain forms of intolerance) is a part of the research question or hypothesis, the numerical data is extracted from the WVS data-base, while the mathematically based methods will be performed with the help of the SPSS software. One important aspect of the quantitative analysis is that its based exclusively on numerical information, but nevertheless it has to serve the social science domain, which in many aspects contains (in its raw, initial form) extremely vague and non-quantifiable data: feelings, unclearly defined points of view etc. For this situation, scale systems have been introduced in the process of statistic research, by converting phenomena that don't naturally exist in quantitative form into quantitative data, which we can analyze statistically, such as attitudes and beliefs (Muijs, Daniel, 2004, p. 2), precisely the tools mostly used on our research. An additional interesting point of view when discussing statistical research is that of the level of personal intellectual and emotional involvement of the respective researcher. Many theory builders are quick in attaching to the two major types of analyzing either the realistic (for quantitative data) or the subjectivist (for the qualitative) label. Thus, the realists describe the main mission of the scientist as a quest for uncovering an existing reality, being as detached from the research as possible, using methods that minimize the involvement of the researcher (Muijs, Daniel, 2004, p. 4). At first glance, this may sound perfectly reasonable and viable; given the fact our group has witnessed its own subjective attitudes first hand while conducting the qualitative research, while being able to take a step back when dealing with the cold facts of numbers from the World Value Survey. Nevertheless, we believe it is almost impossible to exclude subjectivism from the type of research we are performing, as even in the statistical part of the project we were able to choose just a small number of variables, a selection based primarily on personal intuition which could very well tell only a miniaturized part of the truth. However, our sincere efforts to picture the Polish existing reality include univariate analyses (for the hard, undeterred facts), crosstabulations and mean comparisons (for underlining the crucial connections) and multiple regression analyses (for realizing how significant a combination of factors can be on the general intolerance index).

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4.2 Univariate analysis how do Poles actually feel? In the opening section of the quantitative segment we will concentrate on reproducing the Polish people beliefs and attitudes linked to our topic, as they appear in the World Value Survey database. The number of respondents is around 1000 and the year in which the questionnaire was carried is 2005; a fairly recent period, but we have to mention a more up-to-date survey might produce results slightly influenced by the prolife vs. pro-choice ideological conflicts that have intensified over the last few years (with one of the peaks being the anti-abortion bill close to be passed in the Parliament in the summer of 2011). First of all, we wanted to see if indeed religiousness and faith is as widespread as one of the previous sources indicated (with 88% of the citizens Catholic). Analyzing variable Religion important showed us approx 86% of the people think religion is either very (47% of the answers) or rather important in their lives, confirming thus our judgment on having religion among the central concepts in this paper. Nevertheless, considering that one focal point in the discussion revolved around tangible institutions, we had to perform descriptive analyses on variables like Confidence in church or the political parties (seen here as opinion formers on the sensitive issues).
Confidence: Churches
Frequency A great deal Quite a lot Valid Not very much None at all Total 328 382 228 50 988 Percent 32.8 38.2 22.8 5.0 98.8 Valid Percent 33.2 38.7 23.1 5.1 100.0 Cumulative Percent 33.2 71.9 94.9 100.0

From the table above we can state that the popularity of the Church as an organization is relatively high, with only 28% of the respondents answering they have not very much or no confidence at all in the institution. Scores for political parties on the other hand are exactly the opposite, with an astonishing 93% of the people having a negative attitude towards them. A quite simplistic assumption at this point would be that politicians in general suffer from a very low credibility rate in Poland, consequently meaning they should have very little impact on the civic stance towards either abortion or homosexuality, if they choose to make their affiliations public. Obviously, the low numbers only address a minimal side of the issue, as we have no information on how ultra-conservative speeches from almost anonymous politicians, for example, can ultimately trigger on encourage intolerant attitudes. Having mentioned different non-profit organizations in the qualitative part, we also performed frequency analyses on two variables that fit our approach: Confidence in charitable and humanitarian organizations (with a positive combined score of 65%: either a great deal or quite a lot) and Confidence in the Womens Movement (with a not very impressive combined good score of 43%). Federa, the Polish Federation for Women and Family Planning, is by definition an active part of the Womens Movement in Poland (dealing not only with the pro-abortion cause) and could very well relate to

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this score, although we assume the relatively low figures come from the respondents lack of information on the topic (for example 195 out of 1000 subjects have admitted not to posses any opinion on the matter). On the other hand, we can relate the Pro-Life institution with the variable charitable and humanitarian organizations. A negative score of 34% confidence in them, though, could raise some questions concerning public opinion on either corruption or hidden political affiliation of the respective organizations. Despite the fact we have utilized material linked directly to these sorts of organizations in the qualitative part, we will not pursue with further analyzing connections of the respective variables due to the high number of non-respondents, which would make our data not significant.

Churches give answers: moral problems

Frequency Percent Valid Percent Cumulative Percent yes Valid no Total No answer Missing Dont know Total Total 581 301 882 4 114 118 1000 58.1 30.1 88.2 .4 11.4 11.8 100.0 65.9 34.1 100.0 65.9 100.0

Probably the most relevant variable we could find in the WVS connected to our specific topic is Church gives answers to moral problems. Considering the necessity of abortion, for example, comes undoubtedly as a serious moral issue, even for the non-catholic. As weve seen in the previous parts of our paper, the Catholic Church has a very clear answer for this dilemma, fiercely opposing the procedure as presumably life is being generated since day one of the pregnancy. The results from SPSS tell us that 58% of the questioned agree with the fact the Church can provide answers for them or, in other words, agree with the answers given by the institution. Around 30% of the respondents do not agree with this remark, making it very interesting to know how many of these either dont agree with what the Church has to says or just dont feel it is under its powers to provide such answers instead of simple spiritual guidance. Similar numbers are recorded for the variable gives answers to problems of family life (59% yes and 31% no), as for example there is opposition for a couple having a divorce, if not for very few serious considerations regarding fertility, among others. For the concluding part of the univariate analysis we have saved the variables which concern the main topic of discussions from the qualitative exploration: the attitudes of the Polish people towards abortion and homosexuality. Both of them are ordinal, with scales from 1 to 10 reflecting how justifiable one of these issues appear to the respondent, with 10 reflecting the peak of tolerance, if we may say so. For a simplified picture we have decided to recode the variables into just 3 scales, with the answers 1 to 3 being categorized as never justifiable, 4 to 7 as sometimes justifiable and 8 to 10 as always justifiable. When recoding into scales which cant be quantified as equal (as

15

10 does not divide by 3), it is recommended to always assign the median group the largest share (in our case 4 types of answer), while also trying to create the extremist answers groups as equal (in our case 3 answers each) (Zillinger, M. 2011).

Justifiable: homosexuality
Frequency Percent Valid Percent Cumulative Percent NEVER SOMETIMES Valid ALWAYS Total Missing Total System 93 884 116 1000 9.3 88.4 11.6 100.0 10.5 100.0 100.0 577 214 57.7 21.4 65.3 24.2 65.3 89.5

The results are straightforward: the majority of the Polish people who have answered this question (65%) consider homosexuality unjustifiable. Only 10% of them belong to the tolerant group, while about a quarter chose the middle responses. To highlight perhaps even more the conservative attitude showed in the table, we performed calculation of mean and mode for the initial 10-scales variable, resulting in the mode answer being 1 (never justifiable, with 53% from all answers) and the mean reaching just 3.08, very close to our imagined border of never justifiable. The attitude towards abortion variable has given us almost the same type of results after recoding, with 64% of the respondents being against it, while only 8% being in favor. While our objective is obviously not to point out or discover certain flaws in a culture, having more than half of the Polish respondents taking a crystal clear stance against sexual diversity can only raise serious questions on how open-minded this particular society really is, thus further justifying the aim of this present research. 4.3 Bivariate analyses are the impacts of Church discourse relevant? After previously showcasing the general status of Polish respondents attitudes in the year 2005, we are moving on a little closer to our base inquiry by performing bivariate operations between variables also mentioned earlier. The motivation for this is the need to quantify as much as possible the relationships between the studied attitudes towards the sensitive issues and the importance people attribute to religiosity or its main institution. In other words, we have to answer if first of all there really are associations between these variables and secondly how strong the respective connections present themselves (Zillinger, M. 2011). Our first operation was cross-tabulation performed between two categorical variables: our recoded attitude towards abortion on the dependent side and the Church gives answers to moral problems on the independent side. The Chi-square value, which measures if the results of the action can be attributed to chance, was 0.00, thus telling us there is less than 1% probability there is no connection between the variables. As the independent variable is nominal (the answers are either yes or no), the Cramers test of association is required.
16

Symmetric Measures Value Phi Nominal by Nominal Cramer's V N of Valid Cases .239 837 .000 .239 Approx. Sig. .000

The resulting Cramers V value is significant (with virtually no probability of it being calculated by chance), but the actual number, 0.239 tell us the relationship is not particularly strong. We would have been able to talk about a noticeable impact on attitudes toward abortion if the value was above 0.3 or about a serious impact if it would have crossed the 0.5 level (Zillinger, M. 2011). We have to mention that this number does not provide the direction of the association, thus leaving the matters even more unclear. At this point it could be argued that analyzing the way the actual institution and its representatives impact certain opinions is not as obvious as we would have maybe presumed, thus determining us to proceed towards testing a more vague and immaterial concept, the religiosity. Accordingly, for the next step we chose the variable how important is religion in your life as our independent actor, leaving the recoded one used earlier as the dependent. Due to the fact both our variables are ordinal (4 and 3 scales, respectively) we have to operate the Gamma test.

Symmetric Measures Value Asymp. Std. Error Ordinal by Ordinal Gamma N of Valid Cases a. Not assuming the null hypothesis. b. Using the asymptotic standard error assuming the null hypothesis. .520 923
a

Approx. T

Approx. Sig.

.042

10.332

.000

As the Chi-square test has revealed significance of the connection (as seen in the appendix); we may analyze the result of the Gamma test. Having also a good significance, it bares the value of 0.52. This means that the connection between how important the respondents find religion and what is their attitude towards abortion is strong and positive, going in the same direction. It also means that knowing ones opinion about religiosity can enhance our estimation on what he/she feels about abortion by 52%. As a short summary of the cross-tabulation part of the paper, we might say that Catholicism or perhaps its doctrine can trigger more specific responses concerning matters like abortion or homosexuality compared to how the Catholic Church in Poland can address these issues. After analyzing in what direction certain religious affinities can affect Polish peoples beliefs on specific aspects of moral importance, it would be interesting to leave the

17

question how aside and focus partially on who are the respondents? In other words, we want to see if there are noticeable differences between the age groups when it comes to expressing opinion on homosexuality, by comparing their means. Accordingly, we will select age as the independent variable and the recoded how justifiable is homosexuality as the dependent one, before running the test of Homogeneity of variances (or the Levene test). The obtained level of significance of 0.146 tells us that variances within groups are not significantly different, thus justifying the further reading of the Anova table.

ANOVA Age Sum of Squares Between Groups Within Groups Total 17530.750 262017.721 279548.471 df 2 881 883 Mean Square 8765.375 297.409 F 29.472 Sig. .000

The Anova test expresses whether significant differences between groups exist. In translation, we want to find out if the mean age of respondents belonging to category never is different to the mean age of those from the sometimes or always group. In our case, the significance level of 0.00 shows that the difference between groups is large enough compared to the difference within groups, consequently allowing us to utilize the post-hoc Scheffe test in order to find out specific information.
Multiple Comparisons Dependent Variable: Age / Scheffe (I) HomosexR (J) HomosexuR Mean Difference (I-J) SOMETIMES NEVER ALWAYS SOMETIMES NEVER ALWAYS NEVER ALWAYS SOMETIMES -6.570 13.154 6.584
*

Std. Error

Sig.

95% Confidence Interval Lower Bound Upper Bound 9.97 17.88 -3.20 11.82 -8.43 -1.32

1.380 1.927 1.380 2.142 1.927 2.142

.000 .000 .000 .009 .000 .009

3.20 8.43 -9.97 1.32 -17.88 -11.82

* * *

-6.584 6.570 -13.154

* *

From the above table we can conclude that the mean age of respondents belonging to the never category is approx 6.58 years higher than the ones from the sometimes category and above 13 years higher than the always group. Another important aspect is that there are significant differences between all 6 possible comparison combinations. Even though the results are not very surprising (given the fact the younger generation should be by definition more informed and more open to certain discussion topics, like homosexuality), it does make a point about the logical mentality changes which will most likely begin to operate even in a rather conservative present-day Polish society.

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4.4 Multiple regression analysis a broader picture Heading into the concluding part of the quantitative analysis, we felt there was a need to address the open-mindedness level of the Polish people as a slightly multilateral concept, as so far we had focused on singular issues only (either abortion or homosexuality). Consequently, we created the index with the Tolerance label, after summing attitudes towards 4 variables from the WVS: homosexuality, abortion, divorce, euthanasia. The latter 2 were included in the whole concept because they are notions on which the Catholic Church also has strong points of view; for example in order for a priest to recognize a divorce a set of complicated criteria must be fulfilled, while euthanasia is perceived on the same level as murder (even though it is usually considered only in terminally ill cases, whose patients go through high levels of sufferance). All the 4 concepts can be seen as either moral or family issues, usually able to spark debates among respondents.
Reliability Statistics Cronbach's Alpha .779 N of Items 4

Given the fact all the respective variables have the same scale and direction (answers from 1 to 10, 10 being the most in favor), there was no need to perform any recoding. The calculated Alpha coefficient of 0.779 tells us the index is indeed reliable, correctly measuring the whole concept we will study. (Zillinger, M. 2011).

Unsurprisingly, we will analyze the index in connection to the religiosity level, but we also want to add one more card to the table: level of education, which theoretically should have an impact on how one perceive things that can require a more thorough analysis. For the multiple regression we cannot use the ordinal variable of How important is religion in your life in its original shape. Accordingly, we have recoded it into a 2-answer variable (with the very and the quite important answers summed as religious, while the other 2 being summed as not religious). Finally, we created a dummy after this new variable, to be used in the MRA (1 = positive about religion, 0 = indifferent). As mentioned earlier, the other independent variable will be connected to education, more specifically What age did you finish your education?. After running the Linear Regression operation, we have to analyze the Anova table in order to determine the significance level (which in our case is very high see appendix). Moving on to the adjusted R square figure (table available in the annex), we can interpret that approx 17.8% of the variance in the tolerance index is being caused by variance in the religiosity or the education level.
Coefficients Model
a

Unstandardized Coefficients

Standardized Coefficients

Sig.

B (Constant) 1 What age did you complete your education religiondummy a. Dependent Variable: Tolerance_index 9.855 .582 -7.686

Std. Error 1.683 .077 .792

Beta 5.855 .247 -.317 7.575 -9.707 .000 .000 .000

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Running the t-test shows us that both independent variables are significant. The education one is positively correlated with the tolerance index (0.582), while the religiosity one is negatively linked (-7.686). This could simply be translated that the more time one has spent in school, the more likely his/her tolerance index has higher values. On the other hand, if they belong to the religious group, it is very probable they will develop very low tolerance scores. We will test these assumptions on 2 specific examples (a person who has finished school at 18 and is religious and one who has finished it at 25 and is not religious), with the help of the equation: Tolerance index = 9.855 + (0.582 x age of completed education) (7.686 x religious). For the first case, the tolerance index calculated is approx 13, while for the second one the rate is above 24 (we mention that the highest possible score is 40 meaning the respondents sees all 4 concepts discussed as completely justifiable). This operation has shown that even though the level of education is not as crucial in defining ones attitude towards the sensitive issues as religiosity is, it can be seen as an influential factor when having a more open stance concerning them. 4.5 Statistical analysis conclusions The quantitative part of our paper has not revealed some surprising results concerning the general topic of tolerance. Although the answers to our question were not unforeseen, they are still of high relevance, given the excellent significance level of the tests. First of all, we were able to partially explore the theory that the Polish society is among the most conservative one in Europe, with the help of the 4-variables tolerance index. Obviously, some questions can be brought up when attempting to empower this index with the heavy burden of a nations entire broadmindedness level. Firstly, tolerance is such a vague and multilateral concept it is quite impossible to portray it in full even in a broad survey like the WVS, thus leaving us with the option of contraction, narrowing the list of variables down to just 4, chosen out of practical considerations (either topics discussed in the qualitative part or ones which could pose real dilemmas to the respondent). Secondly, although the fact all variables had the same scaling from the beginning made our job slightly easier when performing analysis, one could argue that it would be too simplistic and superficial to assign the same weight to the answers of questions which pose considerably different emotional freights (for example, divorce does not involve the presumed ending of a life, like abortion or euthanasia does, thus making it a much easier concept to process). Nevertheless, we feel we have chosen the most relevant type of index, even with the inevitable mentioned flaws of linking a mathematical system to purely moral and immaterial concepts. Going back to analyzing the results, we can say we encountered rather one-sided results (the mode value of the index is also the minimal one, which is 4, while the median one is 13). This simply means most of the respondents would have the average answer of 3 to all the questions, thus situating them in the never justifiable group. Discussions could be held on the high percentage of invalid responses (around 19% of the
20

respondents have not answered all the questions), thus slightly questioning the validity of the result, but if we would have to draw a conclusion it would be that the majority of the Polish society would take a negative stance against pretty much all issues deemed as deviant. In addition, in the bivariate analysis we tried to see which dependent variable can be held the most responsible for the above mentioned answers, with the immaterial concept of religiosity coming out on top, as expected. What was slightly unexpected, though, was the weak connection between the variable implying the Church has answers for these sensitive problems and the attitudes towards them, thus letting us to meditate on the fact that the way each person chooses to see and interpret religion can be more decisive in the way they think compared to what he/she is being offered by the Church itself and its representatives. Furthermore, quite low scores for the confidence level in independent organizations (and catastrophic ones in the political class) could come to underline the above theory that institutions do not weight that heavy when it comes to forming an opinion. Lastly, we went on to address some intrinsic factors as well, such as age and level of education, as focusing just on external influences on ones mentality would just show a unilateral side of the mechanisms involved. Again, we can say results were not groundbreaking, as significant differences of mean ages between the 3 groups of respondents (on the specific issue of homosexuality) showed that as younger you are, the most likely you are more informed and hence develop an attitude more inclined to un-extremist values. Also, the multiple regression analysis revealed that level of education can ultimately be a factor in producing some moderate answers, although it is very far from counterweighing religiosity when talking about values in our artificial tolerance index.

5. Concluding discussion on overall process and results

Our groups attempt to answer the proposed research question eventually proved to be an extremely valuable process more from the point of view of the overall investigation experience and analysis of mechanisms rather than from the actual sociological results perspective. We admit at this point that we were not looking for new and revolutionary equations that would end up diminishing the influence of religiosity and the Catholic Church on the way sensitive issues are perceived in Poland, simply because this does not correspond to the reality from this country, as perceived by two members of the group who are Polish natives. Instead, we tried to see if what we call intolerance could be the result of processes originating from institutions (like the Church itself, so-called independent organizations etc) apart from the conservative traditions and personal beliefs. Following the qualitative analysis, we can confirm certain forms of wide-spread propaganda (like the case of Pro-Life organization that enjoyed extremely popular support) or conservative ways of interpreting the Christian doctrine by the Church (eg the way Catholic bishops perceive the so-called disease of homosexuality) bear a massive impact on societys general points of view and attitudes.

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From the quantitative analysis perspective, choosing the topics of attitude towards abortion and homosexuality and trying to link them to religiosity was not a hard decision, as the World Value Survey contains the variables mentioned exactly in the shape we hoped they would be in order to obtain more quantified results, and that is ordinal. Nevertheless, approaching these really sensitive issues from a qualitative point of view proved sometimes complicated, as the more conservative organizations seem to be very reluctant to go truly in-depth when it comes to discovering what pushes them forward and whether the notion of Catholicism is familiar to their doctrine or not. On the other hand, and maybe as expected, we managed to obtain solid input from representatives of a liberal group and the two individuals who belong to the respective sexual minority. The fact that our most successful and fruitful dialogues came with these anonymous individuals who do not belong to certain organizations lead us to maybe another logical conclusion; that the most complex and pertinent points of view will always come from independent, open-minded respondents rather than the welltrained and unilateral flag-ship carriers engaged in one battle or another. If we were to draw any clear result from our research, we could say with a firm Yes that religiosity continues to influence the way people perceive deviant attitudes in Poland, whether we are talking about homosexuals, women choosing to do abortions and even couples divorcing. One of the problems is not the result in itself (as it would probably end up similarly in many countries of modern Europe), but rather how the main guardian institution of Catholicism, the Church, operates its influence in ways not considered fit for a democratic republic. As one of our Polish respondents rightfully claimed, the law and its representatives should have absolutely no connection to or be influenced in such a dramatic way by the Catholic Church. On the other hand, the numbers from World Value Survey concerning the overwhelming conservative attitudes miss the fact that society in Poland is undergoing changes and there are hopes that the upcoming generation will contribute to a more open-minded culture in the long future. In connection to this we could also point out to Mrs Urbans determination to transmit the message that the anti-abortion movement should not be connected in any way to the Church or the Catholic doctrine, thus opting to portray Pro-Life as purely a humanistic and consequently a liberal organization with modern beliefs. Still, the same persons reluctance to even mention religiosity in an independent setting, similar to what we can (or better said what we cannot find) in Mrs Nowickas article on the pro-abortion stance, shows us that Catholicism is still an extremely powerful concept in the Polish society, which is sometimes purposely avoided in public or private dialogues, following precisely the heated debates it can generate. As a final remark to this paper, we would like to refer to R.W. Emersons famous quote: Lifes a journey, not a destination. Our group started this project with the goal of finding exact stats, numbers and answers to what seemed a simple yet sensitive question, but ended up infinitely more impressed and absorbed by all the processes and challenges which came along the way. Being fully conscious we have not discovered groundbreaking chemical formulas to contemporary problems, we cannot argue that performing the social science laboratory work made all the efforts worthwhile.

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References
Batson, C., & Schoenrade, P. (1993). Religion and the Individual, A Social-Psychological Perspective. New York: Oxford University Press. Clarke, Peter (Editor). (2009). The Oxford Handbook of the Sociology of Religion. Oxford: Oxford Handbooks Online. Christiano, K.J.(2001). Sociology of religion. Contemporary Developments. Oxford, New York: Altamira Press. Dzierawski, Mariusz (2011). According to the party guidelines. Nasz Dziennik [e-journal] Nr 196 (4127). Available at: http://www.naszdziennik.pl/index.php?dat=20110824&typ=my&id=my03.txt [accessed: 03/12/2011] Flick, Uwe (2006). An introduction to qualitative research. London: Sage George A., Bennett A. (2005). Case studies and Theory development in the Social Sciences. Cambridge: MIT Press. Marc Hooghe, Ellen Claes, Allison Harell. (2010). Anti-Gay Sentiment Among Adolescents. Journal of Homosexuality . May, Tim (1997). Social research: issues, methods and process. Buckingham: Open University Press. May, Tim (2011). Social research: issues, methods and process. Third edition Buckingham: Open University Press. Muijs, Daniel. (2004). Doing Quantitative Research in Education with SPSS. London: Sage Research Methods. Nowicka, Wanda (2011). To the detriment of women? Rzeczpospolita [e-journal] Available at: http://www.rp.pl/artykul/9157,703000.html [accessed: 03/12/2011] Office, Polish Central Statistical. (n.d.). Retrieved December 11, 2011, from http://www.stat.gov.pl/cps/rde/xbcr/gus/PUBL_oz_maly_rocznik_statystyczny_2009.pdf Potter, Jonathan (1996). Representing reality: discourse, rhetoric and social construction. London: Sage. Zillinger,Malin. (2011). Quantitative methods Laboratories 3,4,6 - Lund University.

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Appendix I: SPSS output

1. Confidence in the political parties

2. Confidence in charitable organizations

Confidence: Charitable or humanitarian organizations Frequency Percent Valid Percent Cumulative Percent A great deal Quite a lot Valid Not very much None at all Total No answer Missing Dont know Total Total 124 455 248 63 890 3 107 110 1000 12.4 45.5 24.8 6.3 89.0 .3 10.7 11.0 100.0 13.9 51.1 27.9 7.1 100.0 13.9 65.1 92.9 100.0

24

3. Recoded: Justifiable abortion

abortionR Frequency Percent Valid Percent Cumulative Percent NEVER SOMETIMES Valid ALWAYS Total Missing Total System 78 934 66 1000 7.8 93.4 6.6 100.0 8.4 100.0 100.0 597 259 59.7 25.9 63.9 27.7 63.9 91.6

4. Church gives answers problems of family life

5. Justifiable homosexuality (mean calculation)

Statistics Justifiable: homosexuality Valid N Missing Mean Median Mode 116 3.08 1.00 1 884

25

6. Crosstabulation attitude on abortion recoded + Church gives answers to moral problems

abortionR * Churches give answers: moral problems Crosstabulation Churches give answers: moral problems yes Count NEVER % within Churches give answers: moral problems % of Total Count abortionR SOMETIMES % within Churches give answers: moral problems % of Total Count ALWAYS % within Churches give answers: moral problems % of Total Count Total % within Churches give answers: moral problems % of Total 389 70.0% 46.5% 137 24.6% 16.4% 30 5.4% 3.6% 556 100.0% 66.4% no 131 46.6% 15.7% 109 38.8% 13.0% 41 14.6% 4.9% 281 100.0% 33.6% 520 62.1% 62.1% 246 29.4% 29.4% 71 8.5% 8.5% 837 100.0% 100.0% Total

Chi-Square Tests Value df Asymp. Sig. (2sided) Pearson Chi-Square Likelihood Ratio Linear-by-Linear Association N of Valid Cases 47.695
a

2 2 1

.000 .000 .000

46.710 47.190 837

a. 0 cells (.0%) have expected count less than 5. The minimum expected count is 23.84.

26

7. Crosstabulation attitude on abortion recoded + How important is religion in your life

abortionR * Religion important Crosstabulation
Religion important Very important Count NEVER % within Religion important % of Total Count abortionR SOMETIMES % within Religion important % of Total Count ALWAYS % within Religion important % of Total Count Total % within Religion important % of Total 350 78.7% 37.9% 82 18.4% 8.9% 13 2.9% 1.4% 445 100.0% 48.2% Rather important 196 56.0% 21.2% 126 36.0% 13.7% 28 8.0% 3.0% 350 100.0% 37.9% Not very important 42 41.2% 4.6% 35 34.3% 3.8% 25 24.5% 2.7% 102 100.0% 11.1% Not at all important 5 19.2% 0.5% 11 42.3% 1.2% 10 38.5% 1.1% 26 100.0% 2.8% 593 64.2% 64.2% 254 27.5% 27.5% 76 8.2% 8.2% 923 100.0% 100.0% Total

Chi-Square Tests Value df Asymp. Sig. (2sided) Pearson Chi-Square Likelihood Ratio Linear-by-Linear Association N of Valid Cases 137.964
a

6 6 1

.000 .000 .000

121.964 121.186 923

a. 1 cells (8.3%) have expected count less than 5. The minimum expected count is 2.14.

27

8. Comparison of means age and attitude towards homosexuality R

Test of Homogeneity of Variances Age Levene Statistic 1.925 df1 2 df2 881 Sig. .146

Multiple Comparisons Dependent Variable: Age Scheffe (I) HomosexR (J) HomosexR Mean Difference (I-J) SOMETIMES NEVER ALWAYS SOMETIMES NEVER ALWAYS NEVER ALWAYS SOMETIMES -6.570 13.154 6.584
*

Std. Error

Sig.

95% Confidence Interval Lower Bound Upper Bound 9.97 17.88 -3.20 11.82 -8.43 -1.32

1.380 1.927 1.380 2.142 1.927 2.142

.000 .000 .000 .009 .000 .009

3.20 8.43 -9.97 1.32 -17.88 -11.82

* * *

-6.584 6.570 -13.154

* *

*. The mean difference is significant at the 0.05 level.

Age Scheffe HomosexR N 1 ALWAYS SOMETIMES NEVER Sig. 93 214 577 1.000 1.000 35.00 41.57 48.15 1.000 Subset for alpha = 0.05 2 3

Means for groups in homogeneous subsets are displayed. a. Uses Harmonic Mean Sample Size = 174.839. b. The group sizes are unequal. The harmonic mean of the group sizes is used. Type I error levels are not guaranteed.

28

9. Multiple regression analysis religiosity dummy + what age did you finish your education vs. tolerance index.
Variables Entered/Removed Model Variables Entered religiondummy, 1 What age did you complete your education
b a

Variables Removed

Method

. Enter

a. Dependent Variable: Tolerance_index b. All requested variables entered.

Model Summary Model R R Square Adjusted R Square 1 .424

a

Std. Error of the Estimate

.180

.178

7.78820

a. Predictors: (Constant), religiondummy, What age did you complete your education

ANOVA Model Regression 1 Residual Total Sum of Squares 10415.852 47433.098 57848.950 df

Mean Square 2 782 784 5207.926 60.656

F 85.860

Sig. .000
b

a. Dependent Variable: Tolerance_index b. Predictors: (Constant), religiondummy, What age did you complete your education

10. Tolerance index mean calculation

Statistics Tolerance_index Valid N Missing Mean Median Mode 190 14.1877 13.0000 4.00 810

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Appendix II: Transcript from the interview with the Polish Federation of Pro-Life Movements"
1.Phone-call conversation with Katarzyna Urban, a board*(M= our colleague Martyna; I= informant): member of management

M: Hello, my name is Martyna Glazik, and together with my group we conduct a project for a Swedish University. Our research is about tolerance and Polish people attitudes towards abortion. I received answers from Women Federation who stand for abortion and I really care and count so much for the answers from opponents of abortion, whose arguments unfortunately I did not manage to collect. Would you mind to answer me a few questions? I: Ok. Let's see what kind of questions you have. If they are short...we can start. M: so first I would like to ask about your work as organization in general and what are the basic principles? I: Obviously our activity is based on the fact that we are against abortion and against in-vitro. M: Could you tell me more significantly what are the most important argumentations that you hold against abortion? Are there religious motives involved? I: In our arguments we mostly refer to matters excluding religion beliefs, and in our texts it is often underlined. First of all we base our beliefs on medical arguments, such as genetics, where is said that life starts from conception and becomes human. In our periodical magazine articles also write scientists with postdoctoral degrees. Also, we refer to humanistic kind of arguments like objection towards abortion represented by Gandhi and other famous people who haven't been connected with Catholicism. In my opinion, this absolutely is an organization whose main argument against abortion step aside the religious motives. And a lot of people, followers appreciate that. M: What are the criteria taken into consideration when choosing persons in the board? I: I don't know...You can read on our website, in our statute, there is all written....We gather from time to time and choose in a secret voting. We do not share the motives with each other. I do not know the voting motives of my colleagues. M: Do you take into consideration also the fact that exacerbation in the abortion law does not decrease and neither resolves the issue but contributes to growing underground abortion ortourism abortion to more liberal countries? I: We have published the entire study on this subject of four scientists, about underground abortion and of course in some scale this fact really exists. From this we estimated in the merits way that the scale might be from 7 to 14 thousands underground abortions. The saying about 200 thousands illegal abortions is totally nonsense. In the year of 1997 for a one year abortion was
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legal. This period and demographic situation was quite similar in Poland like nowadays, and there have been executed 3 047 abortions. Therefore this is not true that during 10 years demand for underground and same time very expensive abortion rapidly grew. M: How do you try to influence this situation, do you know you succeed? I: Yes of course we try to change it by changes in consciousness and surely we succeed, I can evoke an example, Rates of public opinions show interchangeably every year bigger support for children birth and lower for abortion. M: One of the arguments, in defense of life, you refer to human rights, but in the popular and loud case of Alicja Tysic the European Court of Justice paid her compensation from for violating these laws, disregard her will and finally relapse of her health because of pregnancy. According to Human Rights Law, are they limited in Poland, that people search for justice abroad? I: Human rights start from the right to live, and end in this moment where this right starts for the others. We can not treat equal right to live and right to health. These are 2 different things. Always the right to live is more important then the other. And this is the first rule of Kant in humanism that Europe had adopted some time ago but did not draw any conclusions from that. So the right of one ends in the moment when right of other starts. So there is not discussion about right to abortion because it breaks the supreme right to live. M: Thank you for the conversation and your time. All this information will be translated in English and transcribed to a written version. If you are interested about the results with pleasure I will send it to organization. I: Yes, please. M: Have a nice day, goodbye. 2. Unsuccessful email. Dear Mr./Mrs. My name is Martyn Glazik and I am a student of Lund University in Sweden. Together with my group, we are conducting a research project about the impact of religion on the moral attitudes of Catholic young people in Poland, in relation to homosexuality and abortion. I would like to kindly ask for a short interview about the activity/work of the organization in defense of life. All information will be used exclusively for the project and available for students and academics at the University, department of sociology. I ask the person who will be able to give me information about your name, role in the organization and brief information about education and personal connection with the issuance of opinions in family planning. Sincerely Martyn Glazik, phone: 518-269-071, marty_nika2@wp.pl

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1. What are the main slogans and actions of your organization and what is your activity primarily based on? 2. What draws new members and supporters to your organization, and what is mostly their motivation? 3. On what grounds are people chosen to the management board? 4. Does a religious dogma play any role in your arguments of your statute, beliefs, and in what specific way? 5. Is there any conflict between the determinants of religious and social morals generally accepted by the society towards your beliefs about abortion? 6. Who is the greatest supporter and benefactor for the organization? 7. Do you think that most of the society agrees with your opinion on abortion? Youve collected 600 thousand signatures against abortion, in July this year. Is this a satisfying number? 8. Did you take into consideration also the fact that exacerbation in the abortion law does not decrease and neither resolves the issues but contribute to growing tourism abortion and underground abortion or emigration to more neutral countries? Thank you for your time. * Contacts of organization: Office in Poznan ul. Forteczna 3 61-362 Pozna http://www.prolife.com.pl/pg/pl.html tel. (061) 653 03 95 fax (061) 653 03 94 e-mail: federacjazycie@prolife.com.pl

Appendix III: Transcript from the interview with the organization Campaign against homophobia
Phone-call conversation with Greg Czarnecki, the member of management board *(M=Martyna; I= informant): M: Hello, my name is Martyna Glazik, and together with my group on Swedish University we run a research about tolerance in Poland towards homosexuals. I: I have a time now, so we can talk. M: Thank you very much, so I would like to start from your activity, what are the basic principles I: We want to legalize homosexual relationships, influence the education at schools, and change the consciousness of Polish inhabitants through all different social actions and social campaigns.

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M: I suppose some kind of parades, showing your minority, might be a too weak signal for our society to change their attitudes of acceptance Can you give me an example of your actions where you try to directly influence the people who might change the attitudes of tolerance in Poland? I: Yes, we do some kind of research, also with other organizations, we exam a handbooks at school regarding how they perceive homosexuality. If we noticed something that is not correct, we go and talk with the Ministry of Education. What's more, we instruct teachers, or conduct workshops with students if allowed by director of school. Additionally we do have a theater group, we go to schools and play, and teenagers can join us. Then we have a conversation about homophobia in general. That doesn't mean the students are the problem but the system they are educated in. M: Youve been working for quite a long time for the organization, do you see any progress through your actions and do you feel that, among the Polish tolerance towards equality and diversity justification is growing? I: Yes of course! Our action 7 years ago *Let them see us evoked terrible controversy. People in trade galleries, like the one in Krakow, lost their jobs because of exhibited posters. So this is like Earth and Heaven, as a year ago we had arranged the exhibition of homo-erotic subject in the National Museum in Warsaw! This is absolutely a different reality! Membership in European Union means that people travel more and they confront different cultures and reality, and they see gays or lesbians as something normal. So obviously we see this progress in a society. I understand it might be strange for someone who never had a contact with homosexuals but now they are seen more often and that is the progress. I do not have to mention the last voting and our members who are sitting in Parliament. I think it was impossible a few years ago. M: Yes that is true. So what about Catholic Church, does it still influence the legislative and civic matters? Could you assume that this is a main source of intolerance in Poland or there are other factors? I: Yes for sure, unfortunately! This is a very big problem. Of course we are not an organization anti-Catholic but we are anti-clerical so that we think the church as an institution has too much to say in public matters, such as education or legislation about relationships or like now we try to change the act on the Protection against hatred. As we see the Church is very hard to reform in Poland. So any progressive step forward is condemned by the church. It is very hard acceptable because it hampers our actions and the progress of tolerance. And it is seen especially in school where there is religion being taught but no sexual education. M: Living with the Catholic faith in the church opinion excludes being in a homosexual relationship, but among homosexuals there are Catholics and there are homosexuals among Catholics. Do you know these types of persons and do you think it causes inner conflicts in such an individual? I: For us being a believer and a homosexual does not exclude one another. We have even a local group from our campaign, in 3 cities (Gdask, Gdynia, Sopot) which united believers and the same time homosexuals. But I know Catholic Church does not support these kinds of people, so for them surely the inner situation it's really hard.

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M: We were talking earlier about influence of the Catholic Church on tolerance. What else could you mention that has an impact on intolerance towards homosexuals? I: This is all connected with tradition, aversion to diversity, xenophobia in general. In the history of Poland people felt a shelter in a Church in the faith, so there is a really powerful catholic, national tradition. So this would be hard to say that only Catholic dogma is a problem. But of course the church promotes the kind of problem in the situation of tolerance, with its strong tradition and homogeneity. *Explanation for readers the year 2011 2 members from LGBT group were elected to Parliament, first official gay and transgender woman in Polish history The campaign featured posters and billboards in trade centers, trade galleries in polish cities with homosexual couples hand in hand. The next week, they were torn down or painted over by officials after complaints from the Catholic Church. Polish gays had expected that with the fall of Communism the countrys attitudes towards gays would become more liberal. But Robert Biedron, chair of the Campaign Against Homophobia in Warsaw, said the Catholic church has opposed all attempts at reform. Although the European Union opposes discrimination against gays and lesbians, there is no uniform policy on gay relationships. http://www.niechnaszobacza.queers.pl/strony/prasa/27.05.03_en.htm * Contact of organization: Campaign Against Homophobia Kampania Przeciw Homofobii ul. Solec 30A 00-403 Warszawa Poland telephone: +48 22 423 64 38 fax: +48 22 620 83 37 e-mail: info@kph.org.pl

Appendix IV Transcript from the e-mail interviews with two Polish subjects belonging to the homosexual minority
1. Individual interview with .M. -age :31 -how big is the place you grew up in: a village of ca. 350 inhabitants -education: higher studies (Ph.D.) 1.You have to admit the homosexuality issue is a very delicate subject, which can divide opinions, especially in Poland. Would you feel that, among the Polish population, the level of support or tolerance towards equality and diversity justification is low? Or are people/times changing? L.M: It's hard to tell. The media are becoming more and more open when it comes to the issue of homosexuality. However, on the public forum, there is still

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a high level of tolerance (or even acceptance) for very extreme opinions in regard to the rights of homosexuals. Some utterances that otherwise would come across as hate speech in the West, are still being said by members of the Polish Parliament, and hardly anybody is surprised by them. I think the population at large is tolerant when it comes to somebody known in person, but it holds rather strong and negative opinions on the general level (homosexuality as something "sick" and "evil" or a risk for the whole society). 2. Would you be able to connect the intolerant attitudes with the important part the Catholic Church is having in both civic and legislative matters? LM: I'm not sure of that. The Church's impact seems not to be very strong any more when it comes to sexual behaviour (except for a number of individuals). On the other hand, the Church's influence on each of the democratic governments (since 1989) does have an impact on Poland not having any form of legal civil unions for same-sex couples. 3. Do you believe Poland is still a conservative and non-liberal country? LM: When it comes to the values that people declare they cherish -- yes. But not in their life choices, not as much, at least, as it was common some 20-30 years ago. 4. Does the Church have an important impact on how the so-called "deviant" behavior is being perceived by the common man? LM: I think so, but only partly. I think this negative perception has its origin in a more general xenophobia, and gays and lesbians are just one of a host of "others". 5.Have you experienced any act of aggression because of you sexual orientation? (threat, posters, harassment etc.) LM: Not so much, but I'm not open (about my sexual orientation) to many people in Poland. I've seen pretty hateful posters, though. And words like "faggot" can be spotted every now and then on walls. 6.We know Poland is a country with a high rate of Catholic upbringing, 9/10 people are Christians. Thus we assume many of homosexual are members of Catholic Church as well. Do you feel or believe sexual orientation can create an inner-conflict between what you are and what you are supposed to be, according to the Catholic dogma? LM: I know it can create this kind of conflict. I lived with this conflict for more than 10 years. But I think this conflict is really "inner" in nature if one really wants to be a "good Catholic/believer". It seems not to occur in those Catholics for whom the faith is not that crucial for their life choices, or, in other words, in those who did not internalize the faith very much. 2. Individual interview with M.S -age: 23 years old -how big is the place you grew up in: Pozna (750 000 inhabitants) -education: bachelors degree (masters in progress)

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1.You have to admit the homosexuality issue is a very delicate subject, which can divide opinions, especially in Poland. Would you feel that, among the Polish population, the level of support or tolerance towards equality and diversity justification is low? Or are people/times changing? MS: I think that still in many countries homosexuality is a delicate issue, not only in Poland. It can create two very opposite attitudes. I was very lucky in my childhood because I never encounter any bad things related to my homosexuality. I first come out to two of my (heterosexual) friends from junior high school and their reaction was surprisingly positive. Than in high school I also come out to couple of my female friends but I knew before that they were partying in gay clubs from time to tome so I felt a little more secured. Anyway my point is that there are many polish young people who has nothing against gays or lesbians. But I think the problem is that people dont know what they hate. I mean the whole negative attitude comes (in my opinion of course) form not knowing anybody who is homosexual. It also would be too optimistic to say that people who have a academic degree would be more tolerant. Im not sure. I think that it changes because we travel more than back in the past and we meet more people. Also the whole gay community has more courage to speak up their needs and demands. I think that my friends accepted me because they had known be before I told them I was gay. They knew me so the fact that I told them hasnt change me in their eyes, I still was the same guy, only gay guy from that day on.. 2. Would you be able to connect the intolerant attitudes with the important part the Catholic Church is having in both civic and legislative matters? MS: Unfortunately yes. Catholic Church has a strong impact on legislation in Poland. We often hear that priests or even bishops give their opinion in mass media about how law in Poland should look like. But that is not the biggest problem. The biggest problem is politics, who listen to those opinions and who create law only for Catholics. There are many politicians that speak from the Parliaments platform and say things like as a Catholic I cannot do/vote or this is against Christian values. I consider this unacceptable. They represent the whole nation; they make law for the whole nation not only for the Christian majority. In my opinion law should be laic. You should have a right which, if you are a Christian, you choose not follow. So in my opinion politics, who choose not to stand up against catholic church and to create a law for their own religion, are the biggest thread for liberation in Poland. 3. Do you believe Poland is still a conservative and non-liberal country? MS: Probably yes. 4. Does the Church have an important impact on how the so-called "deviant" behavior is being perceived by the common man? MS: I think still a lot of people listen to what Catholic Church has to say, and follow its instruction how thinking and how to consider things. I also think that Catholic Church has made an image of gay community as a bunch of faggots who demand right for an unnatural behavior which can bring only

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devastation to natural (catholic) model of life and family. We have in Poland a lot of politics who criticize homosexuality as a behavior against traditional, catholic values. So we are surrounded in Poland by Catholicism, as the-onlytrue-and-right-way-of-life. That does not only concerns homosexuals, its about other religions or atheist people too. If you want to be a true Polish you need to be catholic. Its really horrifying. 5. Poland is a country with a high rate of Catholics 88% population. Thus we assume many of homosexuals are members of Catholic Church. Do you feel or believe sexual orientation can create an inner-conflict between what you are and what you are supposed to be, according to the Catholic dogma? MS: It definitely can! And it does! I also assume that there are many homosexuals in Catholic Church. And I feel sorry for them. I feel sorry because of two reasons. One is that bishops say that catholic dogma accepts homosexuals only if they give up any sort of sexual encounter with one another. So imagine living in celibacy only because you were created by God to love someone of the same sex. Its very discriminative. It says who has the right to have sex and who has not. So if I have a partner and I will live with him and love him thats fine, but when I will engage in sexual relationship with him Im a sinner. To me it sounds ridicules and breaks the human right of being treated equal. The second thing, even worse, is that when you live your life with feeling of guilt it can lead to serious psychological disorders. You constantly hear that your love to your partner is a sin and you will burn in hell. Its so unfair if Jesus said that love comes from God that means gay love also comes from God. And love cannot be a sin! Anyway in my opinion gays shouldnt be part of Catholic Church. I advise them to find some other philosophy of living, one that will not hurt them because of who they are.

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