The Current Status and Group Differences of College Students’ Patriotic Attitude in the New Era: An Empirical Analysis Based on 1,631 College Students
Precise implementation of patriotic education requires a clear grasp of the actual condition of the educatees. The promulgation and enforcement of the Patriotic Education Law of the People’s Republic of China has transformed patriotic education from an advocacy-based requirement into a legally binding norm. Based on a questionnaire survey of 1,862 college students, this study retained 1,631 valid responses (87.6% of the original sample) after excluding cases completed in fewer than sixty seconds and those displaying uniform straight-lining. Descriptive statistics, correlation analysis, t-tests, and analysis of variance, supplemented by effect-size estimates, were applied to a four-dimensional model of patriotic attitude comprising cognitive, affective, behavioral, and value dimensions. Three findings emerge. First, students’ patriotic attitude is generally high (M = 4.786; scoring rate = 95.73%), yet the four dimensions develop unevenly, with affect taking the lead (99.07%) and value lagging behind (92.36%). Second, differences across gender, year of study, and subject track are limited, with homogeneity outweighing heterogeneity; all statistically significant differences are of small effect size, and both affect and behavior decline as students advance through the university, with a comparable gap persisting only between the first-year and third-year cohorts. Third, value correlates only weakly to moderately with the other three dimensions (r = 0.147–0.284), markedly below the intercorrelations among cognition, affect and behavior (r = 0.419–0.600), indicating that rational stance and affective identification do not develop in step; the weakest items cluster in cognitive discrimination and value tolerance. These findings suggest that patriotic education should shift its center of gravity from affective arousal toward rational consciousness, differentiate its provision in response to the limited group differences that do exist, and address the two structural deficits in conceptual discrimination and value tolerance.
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