From the Catholic News Agency:

A survey claiming majority U.S. Catholic support for same-sex “marriage” shows some differences with the “gold standard” of social surveys and did not report important information like the margin of error.

A March 23, 2011 report from the Washington, D.C.-based Public Religion Research Institute included claims that Catholic support for same-sex “marriage” stood at 53 percent.

Mark M. Gray, Ph.D., director of CARA Catholic Polls and a research associate for the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate at Georgetown University, said the claim of majority support cannot be made “with any certainty, given the relatively small sample size here and the margin of error.”

The survey had interviewed about 3,000 people, including about 600 Catholics, Gray said. The margin of error for the Catholic population was plus or minus six percentage points.

“Any percentage here, for all Catholics, could be six points higher, it could be six points lower,” he explained. He criticized the institute’s report for not including either the margins of error or the numbers of Latino Catholics, which he said was “standard practice.”