Browsing by Author "Langton, Kenneth Patrick"

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    The political socialization process: The case of secondary school students in Jamaica
    (1965) Langton, Kenneth Patrick;
    This study sought to investigate the nature of the pre-adult socialization process to learn how politically relevant attitudes and behaviour develop. The major independent variables and socialization agencies investigated were family and family structure, peer groups, and schools. The major dependent variables were political efficacy, dogmatism, legitimacy attitudes, politicization, democratic attitudes, attitudes towards citizenship obligations, attitudes towards civil liberties, political partisanship, and political participation. Questionnaires were used to collect data from a random sample of 1,287 Jamaican students in 1964. The hypothesis that respondents from maternal families would feel less politically efficacious, less politically interested, and would have more authoritarian attitudes than those from nuclear families was generally confirmed for all social classes, except that the differential effect of family structure upon political efficacy was generally a working class phenomenon. The hypothesis that maternal family environment would have a significant cross-sex effect upon male children, while having little effect upon females, was confirmed for all classes on the authoritarianism and political interest dimension, but not with regard to political efficacy. Both males and females from maternal families were less efficacious than their counterparts in nuclear families. Both the peer group and school environment had a significant effect upon the socialization of political attitudes. However, the influence of the familial milieu was traceable throughout the student's peer group and secondary school experience. It was still found to have a significant differential effect upon the respondent's political attitudes as he was about to leave the secondary school and assume his adult role within the political system