The purpose of the present study was to analyze attitudinal dimensions of political alienation present in Japanese undergraduate students. A survey was conducted in October 1986 on a total of 737 undergraduates serving as respondents. The major findings of this study will be summarized as follows. (1) Factor analysis of political-attitudinal scales revealed three salient factors named "political estrangement", "political distrust", and "political powerlessness". (2) By combining the political estrangement and the political distrust dimensions, four types of political alienation were obtained-namely "alienated", "apolitical", "anti-establishment", and "allegiant". Most respondents having lower political interest were found to be devided into the "alienated" and the "apolitical" types. (3) By using Quantification Theory, Class II (a statistical method similar to discriminant function analysis), unique features of each type were further examined, except for the "allegiant". It was found that the "anti-establishment" is positively correlated with post-materialism, while the "alienated" is positively correlated with epicurianism. These findings seem to suggest that there are a number of different patterns in political alienation and that self-centered orientation toward immediate pleasure is strongly associated with political alienation.
