University Students` Attitude toward Civil and Political Rights and Economic, Social and Cultural Rights: From the Theory of Individualization

This study is aimed to analyze the university students` attitude toward human rights, more specifically, civil and political rights and economic, social and cultural rights from the perspective of the theory of individualization. For this purpose, this study conducted a survey to 1,334 university students. The findings are as follows: First, students` attitudes to human rights were measured through the two indices of civil and political (CP) rights and economic, social and cultural (ESC) rights following the UN covenants on human rights. The score of CP rights index was 62 and the score of ESC rights index was 68. Women students showed higher score compared with male students. Second, multiple regression analysis was done to find out the factors influencing the attitude. The socialization in the family and the school did not turn out to be related with the attitude toward the human rights. This could be interpreted not as a problem of the individualization theory, but rather as a problem of measurement of socialization. Also socialization in the military showed a relationship to both CP and ESC rights, even though the direction was different. It turned out to have a negative relationship with CP rights, and a positive relationship with ESC rights. Being a leftout also turned out to be related with the attitude. Sensitivity to gender equality which can be considered as the result of individualization process showed a strong positive relationship with attitude toward both CP and ESC rights