Adolescents are living forming numerous social relations in everyday life. Researches have been actively conducted on social relations and sense of community in the individual dimension of the youth since the 2000s, however, the researches on the mult...
Adolescents are living forming numerous social relations in everyday life. Researches have been actively conducted on social relations and sense of community in the individual dimension of the youth since the 2000s, however, the researches on the multidimensional social relations surrounding the youth or the multicultural acceptability as media can rarely be found.
Therefore, this study was carried out with an aim to elucidate whether receptivity to multiple culture contributed to promoting a sense of community between the social relationships and the sense of community with a focus on the impact of social relations of the youth on the sense of community. This research was to verify in what ways social relations and multicultural acceptability of the youth have an effect on the sense of community. To this end, this study proposed a research model taking social relations, multicultural acceptability, and sense of community as potential variables and verified the direct effects of social relations and multicultural acceptability of the youth and the mediating effect of multicultural acceptability.
In order to verify the research model presented in this study, researches were performed in 2013 in terms of the target youth, that is, 1,977 first year middle school students with the data of the 4th year of the fourth grade panel in the elementary school among the Korea Youth Panel Surveys. As for the technical statistical analysis and correlation analysis of research data, SPSS 19.0 was utilized, structural equation model was analyzed through AMOS 18.0, and a hypothesis about the causal relationships between the model's suitability and the variables were validated.
The main results of the study were as follows.
First, as a result of analysis of the measured model, the measured variables of social relation, multicultural acceptability, and sense of community were all found to measure the concepts at the statistically significant levels.
Second, the model suitability of the final model turned out to be so high that it was confirmed that the structural model represented the data well.
Third, as a result of validating the coefficient of each path of study model, four paths out of seven direct paths in total turned out to be statistically significant. Looking in detail, the social relations within school were found to have a static (+) influence on the multicultural acceptability and a sense of community, social relationships inside the community were found to have a static (+) influence on the sense of community, and lastly the multicultural acceptability was found to have a static (+) influence on the sense of community.
Fourth, one of three indirect paths which took the multicultural acceptability as a medium in the study model was significant. In other words, the multicultural acceptability was shown to mediate the influence of social relation on the sense of community of the youth inside school significantly.
The conclusions and implications of this study are as follows.
First, since the social relations of adolescents were found to act as very important factors that affected the sense of community, and cultural receptivity had a mediating effect on the relationship between social relationships and a sense of community inside school, the social relationships inside school also had a direct impact on the sense of community, however, it was also found to have an indirect effect on the sense of community through multicultural acceptability. In other words, it means the more positive social relationships inside school are, the higher the multicultural acceptability is, and the higher the multicultural acceptability, the better the sense of community. This means the possibility of thinking the promotion of the multicultural acceptability as a factor of enhancing a sense of community, and this study is significant in that it elicits the discussion on the impact of multicultural acceptability even if the researches to reinforce the sense of community can rarely be found for the present.
Second, the social relations within the school and the community showed a significant effect on the improved sense of community. Through these, it was revealed that the role of school and the community was important for the adolescents to grow into healthy young citizens. Therefore, this research can be utilized as an evidence material in establishing practical strategies for promoting school and sense of community using the social relations within school and community.