Sentence:  They discovered that , although 42 per cent of a sample of Catholic students and 15 <WSD>per</WSD> cent of the Protestants believed it important to live in accordance with the teachings of their religion , only 8 per cent of the Jewish students had this conviction . 
Meaning of the word marked with <WSD> tags:  a proportion in relation to a whole (which is usually the amount per hundred)