Amelia Mosher, Laurie O’Neill, Hannah Ott, Jillian Puvogel
According to the theory of political socialization, people form their political beliefs through interactions with their social environment (Hyman, 1959). Banks and Roker (1994) identify three agents of political socialization: media, peer groups, and school. Informed by these findings, this study will examine school as a vehicle for political socialization. Political socialization is an important concept to research because it provides insight into how socio-political beliefs are formed and thus how citizens will interact in democracy. Looking into how school type interacts with this phenomenon can provide information on how school as an institution affects how citizens will behave socially and politically in the future. We sent out a survey asking how much participants agree to statements taken from a right wing authoritarianism scale (Zakrisson 2005) and a critical consciousness scale (Diemer, Rapa, Park et al. 2017). We received responses from 72 participants. Looking into how school type interacts with this phenomenon can provide information on how school as an institution affects how citizens will behave socially and politically in the future.
Do you think that, with a more diverse sample, your hypothesis would have more support?
I find it very interesting how the only significant difference was found in the egalitarian category. I imagine this is probably due to there being students of more diverse backgrounds in the public schools than in the private ones.
I have a similar question to the first comment, do you think a similar test with the same hypothesis done at a non-liberal arts college would have resulted in a conclusion more similar to the hypothesis? I am intrigued by the idea of this study in a different setting.
I found this really interesting. I wonder what results you would see if you conducted this experiment in different parts of the country.
I wonder how the social perceptions of private school kids vs. public school kids impact how people answer the questions? Or if those social perceptions impact the questions asked in the survey?
If this study was done for people right after graduating high school, instead of waiting for most of the respondents, do you think the hypothesis would have been affirmed?
As someone who has gone to private schools their entire life I was very interested to see these results. Your results fit with a majority of the people I know from these schools. I am curious how the results might change though, in different parts of the country. I also wonder how these results would differ between generations, especially with the introduction of social media, which has opened people up to more ways of living, for the more recent generations
Did all of the researchers on this study attend public school? Do you think there was a bias going into this study that could have affected your hypothesis?
This was really interesting! Would using a more diverse sample, or larger sample the results could have supported the hypothesis? In addition, I wonder how the results would be within colleges and universities.
I wonder how these results could change if there were different amounts of people from public and private school. If the majority of participants were coming from private schools, how do you think your results would have shifted?
what other factors differentiate public and private schools and have an impact on political socialization? does religious affiliation play a role?
How can you make sure the population of interest is diverse enough to make sure the results are unbiased?