The similarity of attitudes towards personal and impersonal types of authority among adolescent schoolchildren (original) (raw)

This paper examines the extent to which the attitudes of " " scents towards pe~onal and types of authority ~ dated. Reliable measures of yards personal authorities (parents and teachers) and impersonal authorities (the police and the law) were developed with a preliminary sample of I55 secondary school students. These measures O were employed with further samples of (a) third y~ ~ch ol students 01 ~ 77)who also completed the Keeves to School and School Learning Scale, and (b) first High School students (n = 250) who also completed the Ray and (I983) self-report measures of authority-~iient behaviours in relation to their parents and teachers. The attitudes of the students were relatively pro-authority and did not differ according to gender. In general, the younger group of students were the more pro-authority, significantly so on the measures of attitude towards pe~onal authorities. For each sample tht attitude measures loaded substantially (> 0.6) on the first cipal components analysis. Correlations between these measur~ and (a) attitud~ to school and school learning authority-salient behaviou~ were positive and, in general, ch sex. Overall, the results provided little support for the view that attitudes towards personal and impersonal type of authority are dissimilar.