政治的社会化過程における〈政治的知識〉と〈政治的態度〉の関連

抄録

The purpose of the present study was to examine the relationships between political knowledge and political attitudes, which are the principal components of political orientation.
The questionnaire was administered to 543 male and female students in Nagano prefecture, ranging in age from the third year of junior high school to the senior year of college (113 third year junior high school students; 204 senior high school students, of whom 80, 87, and 37 were first, second and third year students, respectively; 226 college students, of whom 100, 103, 13 and 10 were freshmen, sophomores, juniors and seniors in that order).
The questionnaire contained 32 items which were concerned with political knowledge and 40 items which were concerned with political attitudes. Five knowledge scales were construtted from the 32 items regarding political knowledge: they were 1) US. Japan Security Pact-Japanese Self Defense Army scale, 2) Japanese Constitution-Labor Movement-Okinawa Problem scale, 3) Japanese Politics-Economics-Diplomacy scale, 4) US Politics -Economics scale and 5) US Military Affairs-Diplomacy scale. From the 42 items regarding political attitude, four attitude scales were constructed: they were 1) US. Japan Security Pact-Japanese Self Defense Army-Japanese Militarism scale, 2) US Politics-Economics-Diplomacy-Military Affairs scale, 3) Japanese Politics-Economics-Diplomacy scale and 4) Okinawa Problem-Peace Movement scale.
These nine scales were analyzed using principal factor analysis. The solution was varimax-rotated with two factors. It was found that the first factor was the knowledge factor (have (+) not have (-)) and the second factor was the attitude factor (progressive (+) conservative (-)). From these two factors, the means were calculated for each year and were plotted on two-dimensional plane; the abscissa for political knowledge, the ordinate for political attitude. The resulting curve was a J-shaped one.
The third year students of junior high school had their position on the left end of the J-shaped curve. At this stage of development, the political knowledge was low and the political attitude was not well structured yet. For the second year students of high school, their mean political attitude score inclined to the conservative side, in spite of their increased political knowledge. Hereafter, both political knowledge and political attitudes changed rapidly from the stage of little-knowledge and conservative to one of greater-knowledge and radicalism in a nearly linear relationship. At the junior and senior year of college, both the degree of political knowledge and of progressivism reverted to levels between those of freshmen and sophomores.
Next, after removing statistically the effect of developmental difference and making the entire sample homogeneous, factor analysis was carried out again. The result was not substantially different from that of the above analysis; that is, both the political knowledge factor and the political attitude factor were extracted. From these results it was concluded that the factor structure of political orientation was not affected by the developmental stages of the individual.