The perception of self as it relates to one's identification with selected societal components

Includes bibliographical references (leaves 98-106)The purpose of the study was to investigate the values which young people hold toward their country, and the interrelationships of those values to values held toward seven other selected societal components. The study investigated values held toward the following societal components: self, home, neighborhood, school, religious organizations, voluntary membership organizations, state, and country. A value is a type of belief, centrally located within one's belief system, about how one ought and ought not to behave, or about some end-state of existence worth or not worth attaining. It is a belief of a more permanent nature than an attitude. A written instrument was developed to measure the values of students toward the eight societal components. The instrument (values questionnaire) underwent revision after field testing for readability. It was then field tested for reliability and validity. It was also administered using a polygraph technique. The written instrument was found to be reliable, but discrepant readings between the written responses and polygraph resources raised some question about the reliability of both procedures for obtaining information about the values of young people. A content validation jury found the values questionnaire to be valid, and it was used in the collection of data from a randomly selected sample. A sample of two school units was drawn from each of the following defined strata: metropolitan economically depressed, metropolitan noneconomically depressed, small community/rural economically depressed, and small community/rural noneconomically depressed. Criteria for community size were developed so that school units drawn were from distinctly metropolitan or small community/rural surroundings. The economic classifications used were those of the Federal Register. The geographical area generalized to was a one hundred mile radius centered on College Station, Texas..