This research focuses on Youth Participation Organizations and youth's differing political attitudes depending on the type of the organization. We divided Youth Participation Organizations into two categories, 'government organization' operated by the...
This research focuses on Youth Participation Organizations and youth's differing political attitudes depending on the type of the organization. We divided Youth Participation Organizations into two categories, 'government organization' operated by the subordinate statute under the management of the government, and 'private organization' managed by non-governmental organizations in private sector. 'Non-active' group was set as comparative group. To suggest how types of youth participation organizations affect political attitudes and political orientations, we conducted a survey of youths in Daegu area, ones participating in organizations and general youths without any affiliated organizations. Political attitudes were surveyed by 'political efficacy' which is an attitude towards trust that citizens can affect the political and social change, and 'political trust' which refers to emotional attitude towards the government's policy decision process. Based on the combined model of 'political efficacy' and 'political trust', we classify the political tendency of each participation organization.
The research was conducted by gathering data using a questionnaire targeting total 233 youths in Daegu area, 100 participating in 'government organization' or 'private organization' and the other 123 not belonged to any organizations.
The result demonstrates that youths participating in an organization are less indifferent to politics than general youths, and are always aware of the political issues. Moreover, individual political tendency of more than half of all youths was 'moderation', followed by 'progressive' and 'conservative.'. In case of 'private organization', the channels of participating were mostly suggestions by others, such as friends, seniors, school or youth institution. In contrary, rate of voluntary participation was higher than suggested participation in case of 'government organization' .
Classification of each participation organizations demonstrates that 'government organization' shows 'allegiant' type which is high in both 'political efficacy' and 'political trust', whereas 'private organization' shows 'dissident' type which has high 'political efficacy' but low 'political trust'. Non-participating group shows 'alienated' type which is low in both criteria. Considering how political tendencies of each organizations differ as shown in the result of classification, and how the participating youths mostly have 'moderate' tendency regardless of the type of the organization, it can be inferred that the organization types affect youths' formation of political attitude and tendency. The classification was verified statistically, and the variance analysis shows that both criterion of political efficacy and trust have meaningful positive relationship compared to the non-participating group. Private organization do not have statistic difference in political efficacy and trust compared to the non-participating group, but tends to show negative relationship. In multiple regression analysis which set political efficacy and trust as dependent variables, the analysis was conducted controlling gender, political interest, political tendency, family circumstances, parents' level of education and the influence of political socialization of parents' generation. The result tells that political efficacy is higher in government and private organization than in non-participating group, and political trust is the highest in government organization, followed by non-participating group and private group. Influence of political socialization of parents had a significant effect on political efficacy, whereas peer influence was significant on political trust.