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Political Knowledge among Youth: Some Notes on Public Opinion Formation*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 November 2009

Farhat Ghaem Maghami
Farhat Ghaem Maghami
Affiliation:
The Ontario Institute for Studies in Education
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Extract

Political socialization is defined as the acquisition of orientations, beliefs, and values relating to the political system of which an individual is a part. In this study we are concerned with political knowledge about one of David Easton's major components of a political system: the authorities.

Type
Notes
Information
Canadian Journal of Political Science/Revue canadienne de science politique , Volume 7 , Issue 2 , June 1974 , pp. 334 - 340
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Political Science Association (l'Association canadienne de science politique) and/et la Société québécoise de science politique 1974

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References

1 Greenberg, E.S., Political Socialization (New York, 1970), 3.Google Scholar

2 In Easton's words, “The authorities are those members of a political system in whom the primary responsibility is lodged for taking care of daily routine of the political system.” Easton, , Children in the Political System (1969), 60Google Scholar; see also A Systems Analysis of Political Life (New York, 1965).

3 Ghaem-Maghami, F., “Alienation and Political Knowledge: A Study of the Political Orientations of Freshmen at the University of New Brunswick,” ma thesis, University of New Brunswick, 1972.Google Scholar

4 See Lazarsfeld, P.F., Berelson, B., and Gaudet, H., The People's Choice (New York, 1944Google Scholar); and Campbell, A., Converse, P., Miller, W., and Stokes, D., The American Voter (New York, 1960Google Scholar).

5 The validity of link between political knowledge and involvement has been established in previous research. Milbrath cites many studies which have found a significant positive correlation between political knowledge and participation in the political process. See Milbrath, L.W., Political Participation (Chicago, 1965), 64–66.Google Scholar See also Campbell, et al., The American Voter: and Lazarsfeld, et al., The People's Choice.

6 Milbrath, Political Participation, 110–41.

7 For notes and discussion concerning this assertion and the construction of the questionnaire and its administration, see Ghaem-Maghami, “Alienation and Political Knowledge.”

8 Clearly this initial sample of items is a fairly arbitrary procedure, although we attempted to achieve a wide range of representation of possible items by utilizing all available sources – local newspapers, radio, and television. The items were selected, therefore, on the basis of content analysis of media over one month. Our procedure is in conformity with guidelines suggested for item selection and scale construction; see, Good, W.J. and Hatt, P.K., Methods in Social Research (New York, 1953), 272.Google Scholar

9 See, McClintock, C.G. and Turner, H.A., “The Impact of College upon Political Knowledge, Participation and Values,” Human Relations, 15, (1962), 163–76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

10 The relation of each item of the political knowledge test and the total score were examined by scalogram method. See among others, L. Guttman, “The Cornell Technique for Scale Intensity Analysis,” Educational and Psychological Measurements, 7, 247–80. For a comprehensive discussion of the Guttman technique in attitude measurement see Stouffer, A. et al., Measurement and Prediction: Studies in Social Psychology in World War II (Princeton, N.J., 1950Google Scholar), chaps. 3–6.

11 In view of our small sample, we could not have retained the Guttman scale scores for cross-tabulation purposes. In dichotomizing the political knowledge scale, however, we have obviously introduced some measurement errors. Yet, political knowledge is our dependent variable and as Blalock maintains the damage can be tolerated more when it is in the dependent variable than when it is in the independent variables. See Blalock, H., Causal Inferences in Nonexperimental Research (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1961), 150.Google Scholar

12 Ghaem-Maghami, “Alienation and Political Knowledge.”

13 See Agger, R.E., Goldrich, D., and Swanson, B.E., The Rulers and The Ruled: Political Power and Impotence in American Communities (New York, 1964Google Scholar); and Lane, R.E., Political Life (New York, 1959Google Scholar).

14 “The Know-Nothing Bohemians,” Partisan Review, 25 (Spring 1958), 315–16.

15 The point with respect to political participation was made by Lipset, S.M., Political Man (Garden City, N.Y., 1960), 195–8Google Scholar; and Lipset, S.M., Trow, M.A., and Coleman, J.S., Union Democracy (Glencoe, Ill., 1965Google Scholar), chap. 5.

16 We have demonstrated elsewhere that political alienation is an important determinant of political knowledge. However, more rigorous research and more political-attitudinal variables are needed if we want to make a serious attempt to develop an integrated theory of political behaviour and public-opinion formation. See Ghaem-Maghami, F., “Alienation and Political Knowledge: An Empirical Re-Assessment,” Phil.M. thesis, University of Toronto, 1973.Google Scholar